VANISHING  POINTS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •    BOSTON  •   CHICAGO 
DALLAS   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


VANISHING  POINTS 


BY 

ALICE  BROWN 
II 


"  You  cannot  see  beyond  the  vanishing  point. 
True.  But  take  one  step  and  you  see  more. 
And  so  on — to  Infinity." 

ECKERMANN 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1922 

All  rights  reserved 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


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BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
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CONTENTS 

PAGE 

HE  MAN  IN  THE  CLOISTER   .  *       .       t .         .         .        3 

«.   . ,        i  / 

\AlOTHER  .  .  k  .  .  .  .      .       i         27 

^THE  STORY  OF  ABE .48 

JA  GUARDED  SHRINE' 69 

4     /THE  DISCOVERY      .         •,  •                .         .  87 

V/THE  MASTER          .  •  •    •  .         .         .         .         .         .  105 

^THE  INTERPRETER    »       ......  124 

S/THE  HANDS  OF  THE  FAITHFUL         .         .         .         .141 

VJTHE  WIZARD'S  TOUCH 161 

\/A  MAN  OF  FEELING       .         .         .         .  ^      .         .  181 

-Arw,  LANTERN 205 

E  PRIVATE  SOLDIER    .         .         .         .         .         .  227 

CLUE .  251 

GOLDEN  BABY         .......  275 

THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE   .....  296 

THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY 322 


928565 


VANISHING  POINTS 


VANISHING  POINTS 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CLOISTER 

THE  Littletons  had  an  evening  at  home,  because 
Aunt  Harriet  Webb,  from  Overland,  was  mak- 
ing her  annual  winter  visit,  and  it  became  not 
only  a  point  of  honor  to  stand  by  and  entertain  a  com- 
fortable old  lady  to  whom  all  city  amusements  were  not 
plain  sailing,  but  a  privilege  as  dearly  prized  as  a  new 
form  of  vaudeville. 

Aunt  Harriet  had  kept  a  boarding-house  at  Overland 
in  the  middle  years  which  were  now  slipping  past  her, 
and  it  was  there  the  Littletons,  being  then  persons  of  a 
modest  income,  had  spent  several  summers  and  formed 
for  her  an  attachment  which  they  never,  in  their  present 
flourishing  days,  permitted  to  languish.  Mr.  Littleton, 
who  was  now  a  white-haired  autocrat  of  civic  affairs, 
and  his  wife,  a  faithful  patroness  of  music  and  the 
kindred  arts  whenever  her  name  was  sought,  had  not 
changed  with  the  gilding  of  then"  responsibilities,  except 
perhaps  to  be  more  kind,  more  constant  in  remembering 
their  leaner  time  and  the  companions  who  had  helped 
to  make  it  fruitful.  When  Aunt  Harriet  came,  they 
always  felt  they  were  returning  to  a  delightful  state  of 
indolence,  because  their  engagements  were  immediately 
curtailed,  save  such  as  Aunt  Harriet  liked  to  share. 

3 


4  VANISHING  POINTS 

Mr.  Littleton1  jread  his  evening  paper  and  sometimes 
sat  by  with  a  volume  of  Dickens  until  he  yawningly  con- 
o-uded  it  was  time  to  go  to  bed,  and  his  wife  crocheted 
or  even  knitted  faithfully  to  the  tune  of  their  old  friend's 
chat.  To-night  the  unvaried  programme  was  contin- 
uing, except  that  Ruth  Nutter,  Mr.  Littleton's  private 
secretary,  was  established  there,  smiling  now  and  then 
as  she  was  addressed,  and  pasting  book-plates  into  a 
pile  of  volumes  from  England;  and  Sedgwick,  the  Little- 
tons' grandson,  corrugated  with  reflection  on  social 
problems,  was  frowning  into  the  fire  and  contributing 
nothing  whatever  to  conversational  interchange. 

Aunt  Harriet,  a  short,  stout,  very  neat  old  lady  with 
smooth  hair  dressed  in  the  fashion  of  the  sixties  and  a 
cashmere  dress  she  had  made  herself  according  to  a 
never-dying  ideal,  looked  benevolently  up  from  her 
knitting  one  or  twice,  in  a  lapse  of  conversation,  to 
consider  the  younger  man  and  woman  and  wonder  over 
them  in  a  voiceless  way.  It  seemed  to  her  splendid  to 
be  of  an  age  which  is  no  age  at  all,  and  that  these  two 
were  apparently  ignoring  their  dowry.  They  ought  to 
be  laughing  and  sparkling  at  each  other.  The  pretty 
girl,  with  her  sweet,  pale  face,  blue  eyes,  and  soft  black 
hair,  and  the  distinction  of  her  white  hands  against  her 
black  dress  artfully  subdued  in  style  to  the  precise 
shade  of  her  calling,  ought  to  be  conscious  of  her  heredi- 
tary right  as  accorder  of  happiness,  and  the  gaunt 
young  man,  with  his  brown  eyes  and  working,  sensitive 
mouth,  should  be  gayly  or  even  humbly  suppliant. 
But  no!  These  two  inheritors  of  the  world's  promises 
might  as  well  have  been  creatures  of  withered  eld  for 
all  the  battle  of  merry  life  between  them.  Once  Sedg- 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CLOISTER  5 

wick  did  say  something  about  the  Fabian  Society,  and 
Ruth  lifted  a  quick,  earnest  glance  and  asked  him  if 
he  had  read  a  certain  pamphlet  on  the  plight  of  mil- 
lionaires, and  they  went  on  talking  about  Shavianism, 
with  a  conjecture  from  Sedgwick  as  to  the  likelihood 
of  Shaw's  loving  his  fellow  man.  Aunt  Harriet  could 
make  nothing  of  it  all.  It  seemed  to  her  "  dreadful 
foolish  talk".  She  sometimes  had  quick  poetic  fancies 
sprung  from  reminiscent  glimpses  at  the  pictures  life 
had  hung  in  her  mind,  and  she  suddenly  laughed  out. 
Littleton  looked  up  from  his  volume  of  Dickens  and 
smiled,  out  of  a  general  benevolence,  and  his  wife  asked 
cozily: 

" What  is  it?" 

"I  was  kinder  thinkin',  that's  all,"  said  Aunt  Harriet, 
in  a  tone  subdued  to  her  understanding  of  courtship's 
thraldom,  "  about  them  two  over  there.  I  was  won- 
derin'  if  they'd  ever  been  sleigh-ridin'  together — or 
mayflowerin'." 

Mrs.  Littleton  shook  her  head  and  smiled.  She 
wished  Sedgwick  would  marry  Ruth,  exquisite,  in  the 
eyes  of  them  all,  as  the  highest  imagined  type  of  girl- 
hood, and  sometimes  it  seemed  to  her  he  did  look  wist- 
fully that  way.  But  she  had  never  entered  his  inner 
mind  far  enough  to  guess  how  little  determined  he  was 
in  his  line  of  work,  and  consequently  in  the  trend  of 
settled  affections.  Sometimes  it  seemed  to  him  it  would 
be  necessary  to  devote  himself  to  the  study  of  social 
conditions,  and  even  to  live  among  the  poor.  That, 
when  he  thought  of  Ruth,  drew  a  black  line  through 
any  hope  he  might  have  of  the  equable  happiness  of  a 
wife  and  home.  The  world  seemed  to  him  so  bad  that 


6  VANISHING  POINTS 

he  dared  not  stretch  out  a  hand  toward  the  good  of 
it  for  his  own  possession,  and  Ruth  was,  he  knew, 
supremely  good.  But  he  was  a  poetic  sort  of  fellow, 
with  a  real  inner  passion  for  writing,  and  when  that 
came  over  him  which  he  scathingly  called  individualism, 
he  wrote  by  the  ream  and  destroyed. 

"I  wonder  what  Shaw's  done  with  all  the  money  he 
got  out  of  his  plays?"  Ruth  was  saying,  with  a  little 
defiant  lift  of  her  head,  knowing  how  unpopular  her 
implication  was  destined  to  be. 

"What  business  is  it  of  ours?"  Sedgwick  inquired, 
frowning. 

"It's  our  business,  when  a  man  sets  himself  up  to 
teach  and  preach  and  jeer  about  money,  to  know 
whether  he  begins  at  home." 

She  darted  a  glance  at  him.  Aunt  Harriet,  continu- 
ing her  benevolent  watch,  decided,  though  the  conver- 
sation was  hidden  from  her,  that  Ruth  was  being  a 
little  naughtier  than  she  usually  dared,  trying  the 
ground  as  she  went. 

"What's  he  put  it  into?" 

"Consols,"  said  Mr.  Littleton,  sonorously,  without 
looking  up,  and  Ruth  nodded  gayly  at  the  young  man. 

' '  Your  grandfather  knows, ' '  said  she.    ' '  There ! ' ' 

At  that  moment  a  visitor  was  announced.  He  came 
in  hastily  and  shook  hands  all  round  with  the  lack  of 
ceremony  indicating  frequent  and  informal  meetings. 
He  was  a  robust  young  curate  with  an  ascetic  mouth 
and  eyes  of  a  violet  blue  constituting  his  help  and 
hindrance,  because  they  induced  large  numbers  of  per- 
sons to  accord  him  requests  he  seemed  to  have  made, 
and  generally  involved  him  in  the  complexity  of  things. 


THE  MAN  IN   THE   CLOISTER  7 

He  had,  through  these  years  of  his  energetic  priest- 
hood, kept  his  hand  in  Mr.  Littleton's  pocket,  pulling 
it  out,  when  occasion  bade,  to  scatter  the  largess  it 
extracted. 

"I  really  had  to  come  in,"  said  he,  in  his  rapid  way. 
"The  most  extraordinary  thing  has  happened." 

Littleton  laid  down  his  glasses  and  ostentatiously 
brought  out  a  pencil.  He  searched  then  in  his  pockets, 
the  unlikely  ones  with  the  others,  because  that  pro- 
longed the  pantomime. 

"Where's  my  check-book?"  he  mused.  "I  wasn't 
ready  for  you,  Bond.  Do  overlook  it  this  once.  I 
'most  always  run  to  get  it  when  I  hear  you  in  the  hall, 
but  you  came  in  too  quiet." 

The  curate  could  not  smile  over  the  obvious  old 
joke,  slight  tax  as  it  was  on  a  certainty  of  largess.  What 
he  had  been  experiencing  moved  him  too  acutely.  He 
could  only  repeat: 

"The  most  extraordinary  thing  has  happened." 

"Do  sit  down,  Mr.  Bond,"  counselled  his  hostess, 
in  her  mollifying  way.  She  had  lowered  her  needle  and 
wool,  and  crossed  her  pretty  ringed  hands  upon  them. 

Bond  obeyed  her,  but  immediately  rose  again  and 
stood  leaning  against  the  mantel.  He  evidently  could 
not  allow  himself  the  semblance  of  comfort. 

"It  didn't  seem  such  an  exceptional  case  at  first," 
he  said,  as  if  he  began  the  story  to  the  fire  below  him 
and  not  to  them.  "You  know  how  cold  it's  been." 

"Unheard  of,"  supplied  Littleton.  "Zero  for  a 
week." 

"Yes.  Keep  that  in  your  mind  while  I  tell  you.  A 
man  has  been  sleeping  all  the  week  in  the  cloister." 


8  VANISHING  POINTS 

"In  the  cloister?"  Sedgwick  demanded,  in  a  loud 
voice,  and  Ruth  looked  up  and  lifted  her  eyebrows  as 
a  general  interrogation. 

"The  cloister  of  the  church,"  Mrs  Littleton  ex- 
plained quietly  to  Aunt  Harriet,  who  was  regarding 
them  in  turn  from  a  bemused  wonderment. 

"Ain't  they  allowed  to?"  she  asked. 

"It's  a  cold  place,"  Sedgwick  explained,  rapidly,  so 
that  they  might  get  on.  "It's  really  like  sleeping  out- 
doors, on  a  piazza,  on  a  porch.  How  did  you  find  it  out?  " 

This  was  to  Bond,  who  continued,  in  the  same 
strained  way:  "I  came  on  him  myself.  I  was  going 
past.  I  stepped  in  there  to — "  he  paused,  seemed  to 
sweep  aside  his  momentary  confusion  over  a  betrayal, 
as  a  thing  of  no  moment,  and  went  on.  "I  went  in  to 
look  at  Orion  through  that  fretwork.  I  stumbled  on 
the  fellow.  There  he  was  huddled  up.  I  thought  it 
was  a  dog." 

"What  did  you  do?"  Ruth  asked  this.  She  and 
Sedgwick  were  estimating  to  the  full  the  artistic  value 
of  the  scene. 

"Why,"  said  Bond,  as  if  he  scorned  himself,  "I 
thought  the  man  was  drunk.  I  telephoned  the  police." 

"Well,  he  was,  wasn't  he?"  Littleton  inquired,  out 
of  cool  experience  with  a  baffling  world. 

"Was  what?" 

"Drunk." 

"No.  He  was  done  up,  with  hunger,  cold,  tramping 
about  for  days  in  search  of  work,  and  the  hideousness 
of  not  getting  it." 

"Yes,"  said  Sedgwick,  in  a  quick  staccato.  "Yes! 
yes!" 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CLOISTER  9 

Aunt  Harriet  looked  at  him  in  that  perplexed  way 
of  hers,  as  if  he  with  the  rest  of  them — but  he  more 
than  all  the  rest  because  he  lived  in  a  turmoil  of  theory 
from  which  he  did  not  even  briefly  escape — made  a 
new  social  condition  for  which  Overland  had  not  fitted 
her  understanding. 

"He'd  come  from  the  country/'  Bond  was  continu- 
ing to  Littleton  rather  than  to  Sedgwick,  since  the 
older  man  seemed  to  be  listening  to  the  story  as  a 
story,  with  no  preconceived  idea  that  it  might  help 
or  mar  any  social  theory  of  his  own.  "He'd  been  in  a 
chair  factory." 

"They  get  real  good  wages  there,"  Aunt  Harriet  inter- 
polated, as  a  simple  item  she  was  fitted  to  contribute. 

Then  Bond  included  her  in  the  circle  of  his  more 
direct  gaze.  "Yes,"  he  agreed,  "so  he  told  me.  But 
this  winter  they  shut  down  work." 

"It  seems  odd  he  shouldn't  have  had  a  nest-egg  to 
fall  back  upon,"  Littleton  advanced,  from  the  shrewd- 
ness of  his  own  ordered  life. 

"I  dunno  why,"  Aunt  Harriet  objected.  "Mebbe 
he  had  a  large  family.  Mebbe  his  wife's  extravagant. 
You  can't  tell." 

"He  hasn't  any  family,"  said  Bond.  "His  only 
brother  and  his  brother's  wife  died  last  year.  He's 
been  turning  in  his  wages  to  pay  off  the  debts  they 
left.  They  had  long  illnesses." 

"Sounds  like  a  man  I  used  to  know,  lived  down 
through  the  Gorge,"  said  Aunt  Harriet.  "But  there! 
he  never 'd  been  such  a  fool  as  to  leave  old  New  Hamp- 
shire to  come  pokin'  off  here  where  he'd  be  as  lone- 
some as  an  owl  in  a  bucket." 


10  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Well,"  said  Littleton,  tapping  his  hand  on  the 
closed  volume  of  Dickens,  "what  have  you  done  for 
him?  What  do  you  propose  doing?" 

Bond  looked  at  once  as  if  he  were  hardening  his 
heart,  with  a  determination  to  lead  the  scientific  life. 
He  turned  to  Sedgwick,  as  being  the  one  best  fitted  to 
uphold  him  in  it. 

"I've  given  him  ten  cents  a  night  for  lodging  at  the 
Relief  Camp,"  he  said,  "and  fifteen  cents  a  day  for 
food.  I've  done  that  for  a  week." 

"Fifteen  cents  a  day!"  Aunt  Harriet  repeated, 
innocently.  "I  should  ha'  said  produce  was  higher, 
city  prices  so." 

"Food  is  higher,"  Sedgwick  was  repeating,  hotly. 
"Ask  grandfather  what  his  month's  bills  amount  to. 
Ask  him  how  much  he  probably  paid  for  the  dinner 
we  ate  to-night.  Oh!"  The  last  seemed  the  cry,  if 
not  of  the  hungry,  at  least  of  their  champion. 

Littleton  frowned.  ' '  There,  Sedgwick, ' '  he  entreated, 
"don't  you  begin  on  that."  He  was  conscious  of  a 
warm  heart  and  a  perpetually  depleted  pocket,  and  he 
wished  Sedgwick  would  let  him  alone  to  grow  old  in 
a  well-earned  peace,  not  poisoning  his  food  and  drink 
with  the  ill-judged  reminder  that  some  folks  hadn't 
any. 

Ruth's  hands  were  trembling  a  little,  and  the  pupils 
of  her  eyes  dilated.  It  was  not  easy  to  see  on  what  side 
she  ranged  herself,  but  wherever  she  was,  it  was  in  a 
pulsating  excitement  of  mind. 

"I  can't  saddle  the  church  with  him,"  Bond  was 
asserting.  "It  has  done  all  it  ought  to  in  the  way  of 
temporary  relief." 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CLOISTER  11 

"Ain't  you  got  any  rich  folks  in  it?"  Aunt  Harriet 
inquired,  with  a  genuine  simplicity. 

"The  question  is,"  said  Sedgwick,  in  rapid  explana- 
tion, then  to  sweep  her  aside  for  the  immediate  issue, 
"whether  the  church  would  have  a  right  to  take  him 
in  as  a  regular  pensioner  when  it  has  so  many  already 
for  whom  it  can't  find  work." 

"Mercy!"  said  Aunt  Harriet.  "Seems  if  there  was 
work  enough  in  the  world,  only  anybody's  willin'  to 
do  it."  Then  she  began  to  realize  that  the  coil  was 
getting  too  complicated  for  her,  and  withdrew  into 
silence. 

"I  suppose  you  wrote  to  his  old  home  to  find  out 
whether  his  story  is  true?"  Sedgwick  was  asking. 

"Yes,"  said  Bond.  "I  got  the  answer  to-day.  It's 
all  perfectly  straight.  He's  a  man  of  good  character. 
The  factory  did  shut  down.  He's  honestly  out  of 
work." 

"Won't  they  give  him  relief?  " 

"He  won't  take  it." 

"But  he'll  take  it  from  you!" 

"There's  something  queer  about  that.  He  appears 
to  consider  it  in  the  nature  of  a  loan  till  he  gets  a  job. 
He  seems  to  feel  it's  different  coming  through  the 
church." 

"So  it  is,"  Ruth  put  in,  quickly,  adding  then,  when 
Sedgwick  looked  at  her  as  if  to  demand  her  reasons, 
"so  it  ought  to  be." 

Bond  immediately  went  back  to  his  old  perplexity 
of  visage,  the  expression  he  had  worn  in  entering. 
"That's  exactly  it,"  he  said.  "There's  something 
awfully  moving  about  his  drifting  down  here  and  mak- 


12  VANISHING  POINTS 

ing  no  appeal,  but  just  going  to  the  church,  to  sleep, 
and  freeze  if  he  had  to.  It's  as  if  he  had  a  right  to 
because  it  was  the  church." 

"Pooh!  pooh!"  said  Littleton.  It  would  have  been 
a  simpler  thing  to  make  out  a  check  in  the  begin- 
ning than  to  see  his  evening  dissipated  in  the  fruitless 
speculating  he  had  for  daily  meat  when  Sedgwick  was 
at  home.  "He  went  there  because  it  was  a  shelter  and 
he  wasn't  likely  to  be  disturbed.  He'd  have  gone  just 
the  same  if  it  had  been  a  stock  exchange." 

"No,"  said  Bond,  "I  don't  agree  with  you.  He 
went  because  it  was  the  church. 

"Yes,"  said  Ruth,  softly,  "I  think  it  was  because  it 
was  the  church." 

"Oh,  unquestionably,"  said  Sedgwick,  "it  was  the 
church." 

"Yes,  dear,"  echoed  Mrs.  Littleton,  in  a  gentle 
reproof  of  her  husband's  cruder  solution.  "I  guess  it 
seemed  different  to  him  because  'twas  a  church." 

"Well,"  said  Littleton,  crisply,  "what  you  going  to 
do  with  him?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Bond  offered,  droopingly. 

"Pay  his  fare  back  to  the  country?" 

"He  won't  go." 

"What  does  he  propose  doing?" 

"Says  he  shall  find  work." 

"Have  you  told  him  how  the  unemployed  are  march- 
ing up  and  down  these  streets?"  Sedgwick  inquired, 
"and  if  he  joins  them  he'll  only  be  one  more?" 

"Yes." 

"What  does  he  say  then?" 

"Says  he  never  heard  of  such  a  thing." 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CLOISTER  13 

"Well,  I  never  did  either,"  Aunt  Harriet  ventured. 
"That's  the  sensiblest  word  I've  heard  this  night." 

"Well,"  said  Littleton,  conclusively.  He  dived  into 
his  pocket  and  brought  out  a  five-dollar  bill.  "Anyway, 
Bond,  you  better  use  that  for  him  till  you  can  ship  him. 
He's  got  to  live." 

Bond  took  it,  as  it  seemed,  reluctantly.  "Neverthe- 
less," he  demurred,  "we  can't  have  other  towns  pour- 
ing their  unemployed  in  on  us." 

"Of  course  we  can't,"  said  Sedgwick.  "The  problem's 
got  to  be  met  and  faced  on  the  spot." 

"Seems  terrible  queer  to  me,"  Aunt  Harriet  mur- 
mured, as  she  went  back  to  her  knitting,  "it  should  be 
so  hard  to  come  by  work.  Most  of  us  see  more  ahead 
of  us  than  we  can  stagger  under.  If  anybody  ain't 
got  anything  to  do,  they  might  be  gettin'  the  bugs  off'n 
the  trees." 

But  this  brought  on  the  question  of  meagre  appro- 
priations, and  that  led  to  the  destruction  of  the  forests, 
and  in  the  whiff  and  wind  of  it  all  Aunt  Harriet  felt 
with  bewilderment  that  she  lived  in  a  world  "not 
realized".  When  Bond  took  his  leave  the  question 
went  temporarily  back  to  the  man  in  the  cloister. 

"When  shall  you  see  him  again?"  Sedgwick  asked, 
with  no  particular  purpose. 

Bond  looked  shamefaced.  "Why,  I  might  see  him 
any  minute,"  he  owned.  "He's  taken  to  following  me 
round — when  he  isn't  looking  for  work.  He  seems  to 
think  because  I  found  him  there  that  I've  got  some 
power  of  life  and  death — he  seems  to  feel  easy  with  me." 

"That's  the  church  again,"  Ruth  declared,  and  Bond 
saw  assent  in  all  the  other  faces. 


14  VANISHING  POINTS 

When  he  had  gone,  Littleton  returned  to  his  book, 
feeling  that  immunity  was  cheaply  bought  for  a  five- 
dollar  note,  and  Sedgwick  followed  Ruth  into  the  recess 
of  the  window,  where  she  had  gone  to  put  away  her 
work  in  the  little  carved  chest  under  the  sill.  Aunt 
Harriet  glanced  at  them  contentedly.  Now,  she 
thought,  they  were  to  have  some  of  the  golden  con- 
fidences suited  to  their  time.  But  Sedgwick  was  saying, 
with  a  passion  in  no  way  less  forceful  than  the  passion 
of  love: 

" Think  of  it!  While  we've  been  at  the  theatre,  or 
sitting  here  by  an  open  fire  and  then  going  to  bed  in 
luxury,  that  man  has  been  lying  there — or  tramping 
up  and  down,  more  likely — in  the  cold  cloister. " 

"Yes-,"  said  she,  "it's  dreadful.    But,  Sedgwick—" 

"Well?"  asked  he.  Then  when  she  seemed  timid 
about  continuing,  he  recalled  himself  from  somewhere 
and  interrogated  her  again. 

"You  know,"  she  said,  "when  you  were  at  the 
theatre,  maybe  you  were  learning  how  to  write  your 
play.  When  you  sat  there  by  the  fire,  you  were  reading 
a  book  to  teach  you  how  to  write  other  books." 

"That's  another  of  my  luxuries,"  he  fulminated. 
"That's  what  I  call  the  intellectual  life.  And  I  can 
pursue  it,  and  another  man  has  to  sleep  in  the  cloister." 

"But  it's  your  work,"  she  reminded  him.  "We 
both  know  it's  your  work." 

He  was  caught  up  in  a  cloud  of  rapt  imaginings,  and 
she  knew  her  recall,  no  matter  how  clear  she  made  it, 
would  be  inaudible  to  him.  Thus  it  was,  day  after 
day.  The  spirit,  she  thought,  said  unto  him,  Write, 
but  he  was  too  deafened  by  the  clangor  of  the  world 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CLOISTER  15 

to  listen  or  obey.  The  spirit  might,  she  knew,  have 
also  said  unto  him,  Love,  but  the  homespun  way  of 
youth  and  ardor  seemed  to  him  too  complex,  perhaps 
also  too  flowery  while  others  walked  on  thorns,  and  he 
turned  from  it. 

By  and  by  the  older  people  went  up  to  bed  and  left 
them  still  talking  in  their  corner.  Then  Ruth  rose  and 
yet  lingered  a  minute,  casting  wistful  glances  about 
the  room,  its  dying  fire,  the  fitful  light  on  books  and 
ceiling  transforming  it  all,  at  each  leap,  into  one  or 
another  shape  of  domestic  peace.  She  was  seeing  its 
beauty  as  a  refuge  and  an  abiding-place,  and  with  an 
intensity  that  gave  her  an  ache  in  the  throat  and  a 
constriction  of  tears.  But  he  was  thinking  of  the  man 
in  the  cloister. 

While  he  was  getting  his  hat  in  the  hall  she  was  half- 
way up  the  stairs.  She  turned  to  look  at  him.  "Good 
night,"  she  said;  and  then,  irrepressibly,  seeing  that  his 
hand  was  on  the  door,  "Why,  you  haven't  your  over- 
coat." 

"No,"  said  Sedgwick.    "Good  night." 

"Then  you're  coming  back?" 

"No,  not  to-night." 

He  went  out  into  the  cold  and  left  her  wondering. 
She  even  went  down  and  sought  out  his  coat  in  the 
closet  under  the  stairs.  There  it  was,  opulent  in  fur, 
and  her  hand  curled  endearingly  over  it.  When  she 
went  up-stairs  again,  rather  slowly  and  pondering, 
Mrs.  Littleton  opened  a  door  above  and  put  out  her 
pink  face,  funny  and  dear  hi  its  border  of  blue-ribboned 
curl  papers. 

"Isn't  he  going  to  stay  to-night?"  she  asked. 


16  VANISHING  POINTS 

"No,"  Ruth  told  her,  waking  to  accord  a  smile  out 
of  the  desire  not  to  pass  on  her  own  perplexity. 

"Gone  to  the  Settlement?" 

There  was  nothing  to  do  but  to  say  he  was  not  to  be 
back  that  night,  and  then  she  kissed  the  pink  old  face 
and  patted  the  curl  papers  and  went  on.  Mrs.  Littleton 
withdrew  to  her  room,  sighing  a  little,  to  tell  her  hus- 
band she  did  wish  Sedgwick  could  see  how  much  like 
a  daughter  Ruth  was,  and  how  perfectly  ridiculous  it 
was  to  pay  her  wages  when  she  might  be —  But  she 
paused  because,  when  she  got  as  far  as  that,  her  hus- 
band always  told  her  Ruth  was  a  dear  good  girl,  but 
match-makers  were  meddlers  and  she'd  better  shut  up. 

The  next  day  Sedgwick  did  not  appear,  and  it  was 
assumed  that  he  was  at  the  Settlement  and  busy.  Once 
Ruth  telephoned  him  to  know  whether  he  knew  he  had 
left  his  coat,  but  he  seemed  obtuse  to  the  conventional 
idea  that  he  might  have  use  for  it.  But  at  the  end  of 
the  message,  when  she  was  about  to  hang  up  the 
receiver,  wishing  he  would  add  a  word  to  prove  he  was 
in  a  sane  mind,  he  called  her  back. 

"Oh,"  said  he,  "the  coat!  If  Bond  comes  in,  give 
it  to  him.  Tell  him  to  hand  it  over  to  the  man." 

"What  man?"  she  asked. 

"Have  you  forgotten  him?   The  man  in  the  cloister." 

"Oh;  but  he  isn't  sleeping  in  the  cloister  now,"  she 
reminded  him. 

"  No,  I  know  he  isn't.    Good-by." 

Then  there  were  other  days,  and  at  the  end  of  them 
Bond  came  in,  looking  uncontrolledly  aghast,  as  if  he 
had  more  to  communicate  than  he  could  possibly  pre- 
pare suitably  for  normal  ears.  It  was  about  the  time 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CLOISTER  17 

of  night  that  he  had  appeared  before,  and  the  scene 
was  the  same.  Littleton  was  reading  Dickens,  twenty 
pages  farther  on — he  always  owned  to  being  a  slow 
reader — Aunt  Harriet  was  knitting,  and  Mrs.  Littleton 
wound  yarn.  Only  Ruth  sat  by  in  an  unwonted  idle- 
ness, inwardly  chiding  herself  for  finding  the  moment 
dull  and  wishing  it  could  be  shivered  into  sparkling 
atoms  by  an  entering  presence.  Bond  looked  at  them 
as  if  he  really  did  not  know  how  to  prepare  them  for 
what  was  coming. 

"It's  the  man  in  the  cloister  over  again,"  he  blurted 
out. 

"Has  that  fool  gone  back  there?"  Littleton  inquired, 
slipping  his  book-mark  over  the  edge.  He  looked  his 
boredom.  "Well,  I'll  pay  him  to  get  out  and  go  to 
Palm  Beach.  Why  can't  he  take  himself  home  and 
hibernate  like  the  woodchucks?  That's  all  the  sense 
he's  got." 

Ruth  had  risen,  as  if  something  dragged  her  to  her 
feet :  she  stood  holding  her  breath  down,  and  her  hands 
tight. 

"It's  another  man,"  said  Bond,  also  breathless. 

"Then  you've  allowed  it  to  get  into  the  papers.  If 
there's  one  suicide,  there's  always  a  half-dozen." 

"Where  is  he?"  Ruth  asked,  chokingly. 

Bond  turned  to  her  who  had  understood.  "I've 
wrapped  him  up  and  telephoned  for  the  ambulance." 

"You  haven't  left  him  alone?" 

"  Whittaker's  with  him." 

Aunt  Harriet  looked  up.  "  Whittaker,"  she  repeated. 
"That's  the  name  of  mother's  cousins  down  through 
the  Gorge.  Seems  real  homey  to  hear  that  name." 


18  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Whittaker's  the  man  in  the  cloister,  the  first  one," 
Bond  explained  to  Ruth,  in  a  swift  aside. 

"I'll  go  and  open  his  room,"  she  said,  with  the  instant 
air  of  absorption  in  an  exacting  task. 

"You'd  better." 

By  the  time  she  was  out  at  the  door  they  were  on 
their  feet.  Now  Mrs.  Littleton  was  trembling.  She 
put  a  plump  ringed  hand  on  the  clergyman's  arm. 

"Mr.  Bond,"  she  said,  "what's  happened?  Who  is 
the  man?  Are  they  bringing  him  here?  " 

He  took  the  hand  in  his  young  strong  one.  "It's 
your  grandson,  Mrs.  Littleton,"  he  said/  in  a  tone 
calculated  to  dominate  her.  ' '  It's  Sedgwick." 

"Sedgwick!"  fulminated  Littleton.  "What's  he 
been  doing  in  the  cloister?" 

"Sleeping  there,"  said  Bond,  patiently.  "He's  been 
doing  it  for  a  week." 

Littleton  gasped  at  him.  "What  for?"  he  entreated. 
"What,  in  the  name  of  all  created,  /or?" 

"To  see  how  it  seems,"  Bond  was  explaining,  from 
no  special  wonder  of  his  own,  "not  to  be  more  fortunate 
than  the  other  man." 

Littleton  recovered  his  breath.  "Well,  then,"  he 
roared,  "damn  philanthropy!  Dann  socialism!  that's 
what  I  say." 

"It  isn't  philanthropy  exactly,"  offered  Bond.  "It 
isn't  socialism.  It's  poetry.  There  he  is.  I'll  open  the 
door." 

Sedgwick  was  not  himself,  shivering  and  chattering 
in  the  clutches  of  a  chill  calculated  to  teach  him  what 
cold  could  be.  Aunt  Harriet  had  sped  up  to  her  own 
room  to  change  her  best  henrietta  and  tie  on  an  apron, 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CLOISTER  19 

judging  that  she  might  be  needed  to  nurse.  The  others 
got  him  to  bed  and  the  doctor  was  sent  for,  and  Bond 
and  Whittaker  went  away,  rather  hurriedly  because 
Bond  judged  from  the  expression  of  Littleton's  face, 
as  he  regarded  Whittaker,  that  short  shrift  would  be 
allowed  in  that  house  to  a  man  who  had  set  the  fashion 
of  sleeping  in  cloisters.  And  yet  Whittaker  was  not  a 
person  to  be  suspected  of  insurrectionary  theory.  He 
was  a  lean,  shrewd-looking  New  Englander  with  a  long 
irregular  face  and  sparse  locks.  An  air  of  extreme  mild- 
ness enveloped  him,  and  only  when  one  noted  the  out- 
line and  set  of  his  jaw  did  it  seem  as  if  he  might  unex- 
pectedly show  the  flag  of  a  wilful  obstinacy.  His  light 
eyes  were  rather  dull,  but  they  had,  it  could  be  seen  even 
in  the  short  interval  of  his  stay,  an  almost  worshipful 
intensity  whenever  they  encountered  Bond,  who  had 
become,  it  was  evident,  the  god  of  a  masterless  man. 
But  no  one  save  Littleton,  in  the  extremity  of  his  impa- 
tience, had  eyes  for  him  that  night.  Sedgwick,  Aunt 
Harriet  said  positively,  when  she  appeared,  wearing 
her  work-apron,  without  which  she  never  travelled, 
was  going  to  be  sick. 

In  the  next  week  he  did  go  through  all  the  hateful 
stages  of  it.  A  nurse  came  and  ruled  the  household, 
except  Aunt  Harriet,  who  stood  by  to  watch  her  deft 
ways  with  an  open-mouthed  admiration  and  won  the 
potentate's  regard. 

"  We'll  pull  him  out,"  the  doctor  said,  when  Mrs. 
Littleton  approached  him  from  the  retreat  where  she 
hovered  at  the  head  of  the  stairs,  and  Ruth,  lingering 
in  the  shadow  of  the  hall,  also  heard,  and  ran  quickly 
back  into  her  room.  He  was  pulled  out;  and  Littleton, 


20  VANISHING  POINTS 

when  his  grandson  was  convalescent,  had  to  be  bound 
with  thongs  of  remonstrance  lest  he  inquire  of  Sedgwick 
why  he'd  been  a  blatant  fool. 

"I  can't  live  unless  I  know  why  he's  such  a  fool," 
he  raged,  almost  weepingly,  to  Ruth,  who  was  found 
to  be  the  only  one  to  soothe  him.  "  What  does  he  think 
he  put  us  through  all  this  for — sleeping  in  cloisters 
till  he  froze  himself  and  living  in  Settlement  houses  till 
he  got  pneumonia?  What's  he  think  it's /or?" 

"He  wants  to  share  the  common  lot,"  she  soothed 
him. 

"The  common  lot!  Why  don't  he  go  to  work,  then, 
and  do  something  to  make  the  common  lot  easier,  in- 
stead of  upsetting  a  whole  household  and  worrying  his 
grandmother  to  death?" 

"Dear  Mr.  Littleton,"  said  Ruth,  mollifying  him 
with  her  prettiest  smile,  "the  great  reformers  have 
always  done  it — the  great,  great  ones." 

"Done  what?" 

"Shared  the  common  lot." 

"Well,"  said  Littleton.  He  drew  his  volume  of 
Dickens  toward  him  and  grudgingly  noted  how  few 
pages  he  had  read  throughout  that  anxious  interval. 
' '  Sedgwick  ain't  a  reformer.  He's  just  a  boy  that  writes 
poetry  for  the  magazines.  And  it's  good  poetry,  too. 
But  he  can  take  it  from  me  that  he's  got  to  stop  sleeping 
round  in  cloisters  or  I  shall  be  disgusted  with  him — 
disgusted!  I'm  pretty  near  that  now." 

Another  night  Sedgwick  was  downstairs  after  dinner. 
He  was  very  pale  and  handsome,  and  insisted  that  he 
was  in  no  danger  of  feeling  a  draught.  It  was  Ruth 
who  showed  the  strain  of  the  last  weeks.  Yet  she 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CLOISTER  21 

looked  her  lightheartedness.  While  they  all  sat  there 
in  their  recovered  quiet,  Bond  came  in,  and  Aunt 
Harriet  innocently  tossed  the  apple  of  discord  again 
among  them. 

" Whatever  become  o'  that  man?"  she  asked,  guile- 
lessly, "the  one  that  slep'  in  the  cloister?" 

Littleton  groaned  ostentatiously.  Bond  looked  guilty. 
"Well,"  said  he,  "nothing  has  become  of  him  really. 
He's  living  on  tuppence  a  day  and  going  downhill  on 
it.  He  won't  take  any  money  from  me,  because  he 
says  he's  able  to  earn  it.  He  gets  a  job  now  and  then, 
a  little  shovelling  or  something  of  that  sort,  a  few  cents 
for  carrying  bags  at  the  station.  He's  immovably 
obstinate." 

"You  say  his  name's  Whittaker?"  Aunt  Harriet 
inquired.  "They're  all  set.  Why,  I  had  a  kind  of  a 
third  cousin  named  Whittaker  that  gran'ther  left  my 
little  place  to.  One  day  gran'ther  got  mad  with  me 
because  I'd  bored  my  ears  an'  threaded  in  green  silk, 
an'  I  wouldn't  take  it  out  to  please  him,  an'  he  made  his 
will  all  complete,  an'  this  far-away  kind  of  a  cousin  he 
said  'twa'n't  fair,  I  was  a  girl  so,  an'  he  up  an' 
refused  the  whole  of  it.  That's  what  the  Whittakers 
be." 

"There's  a  lot  he  might  do  if  he  were  stronger,"  said 
Bond,  reflectively,  "but  he  isn't  altogether  fit.  He  had 
a  broken  arm  years  ago  and  it  was  badly  set — " 

Aunt  Harriet  was  on  her  feet.  She  spoke  loudly,  and 
they  all  looked  amazement  at  her  excited  face.  "Why 
didn't  you  tell  me  that  before? "  she  inquired.  "What's 
his  given  name?" 

"Silas.    His  name  is  Silas." 


22  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Why,  that's  my  own  third  cousin  as  ever  was.  I 
should  think  you'd  ha'  had  sense  enough  to  told  me. 
Where  am  I  goin'  to  find  him  straight  off  before  I  take 
the  train  to-morrer  mornin'?" 

Bond  took  on  his  look  of  shamefaced  impatience  at 
having  to  confess  himself  the  victim  of  an  attachment. 

"You  might  find  him  outside  there  at  this  present 
minute/'  he  owned.  "He  walked  here  with  me.  It 
really  isn't  so  bad  as  it  seems/'  he  explained  to  Little- 
ton. "He's  always  asking  me  questions  about  the 
Second  Advent.  He  has  an  idea  the  world  is  coming 
to  an  end  presently." 

"The  fool!  course  he  has!"  Aunt  Harriet  cried. 
She  was  at  the  window  and  now  she  threw  it  wide. 
"You  stan'  one  side,  out  o'  the  draught,"  she  bade 
Sedgwick  over  her  shoulder.  "I  won't  keep  it  up  but  a 
second.  Silas!  Silas  Whittaker,  you  step  yourself  in 
here."  The  window  came  down  again  with  a  run,  and 
Aunt  Harriet  took  her  resolute  way  to  the  front  door. 
"Well,  here  you  be,"  they  heard  her  saying.  "Now 
ain't  you  ashamed  o'  yourself  makin'  all  this  to-do 
when  you  might  ha'  wrote  to  me  an'  there' d  been  the 
endon't?" 

Upon  that  Silas  Whittaker  followed  her  in.  He  was 
neither  surprised  nor  abashed,  only  most  unaffectedly 
delighted  to  find  one  of  his  own  blood.  Aunt  Harriet 
had  no  idea  of  naming  him  to  them.  The  man  in  the 
cloister  had  become  too  familiar  a  conception  for  that. 

"You  stretch  out  your  arms,"  she  bade  him,  and 
when  he  did  it,  regarded  the  worn  sleeves  affectionately. 
"Yes,  you  be  Si  Whittaker  an'  no  mistake.  Your  arm 
trouble  you  now?  Well,  'tain't  so  much  shorter  'n 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CLOISTER  23 

t'other,  an'  I  guess  you  can  do  a  day's  work  with  the 
heft  of  'em." 

"Glad  to  see  ye,  Harriet,  glad  to  see  ye,"  he  re- 
sponded, with  a  shining  face.  ' '  You  down  here  nursin'  ? ' 

"I'm  goin'  home  to-morrer,"  said  Aunt  Harriet. 
"I'm  goin'  by  the  nine  o'clock.  Now  you  be  down 
there  to  the  station,  an'  you  come  right  up  along  with 
me,  an'  stay  till  the  chair  factory  opens." 

His  eyes  narrowed  with  the  immovable  look  the 
Reverend  Arthur  Bond  had  learned  to  venerate.  "I 
ain't  no  hand  for  visitin',  Harriet,"  he  told  her. 
"Much  obliged  to  you" 

Aunt  Harriet  also  was  a  Whittaker,  and  she  knew 
what  medicine  agreed  with  them. 

"I've  got  plenty  o'  jobs  for  ye,"  she  cunningly  en- 
treated. "There's  the  house  to  open  an'  wood  to  chop 
an',  soon's  the  snow's  off,  the  fencin'  to  do.  If  I  can't 
depend  on  my  own  flesh  an'  blood,  I  dunno  who  I 
can  turn  to." 

"That  so?"  Silas  inquired,  in  a  dash  of  eagerness. 
"Well,  I'll  be  there." 

She  was  following  him  to  the  door.  "Nine  o'clock," 
she  reminded  him.  "Better  be  ahead  o'  time.  I  got 
the  money  for  the  tickets.  We'll  have  a  real  nice 
ride." 

When  she  returned,  the  others  were  glowing  at  her 
in  various  fashions. 

"So  that,"  said  the  curate,  in  a  moved  voice,  "that's 
your  solution." 

"What?"  asked  Aunt  Harriet,  but  not  as  if  the 
answer  concerned  her  vitally.  She  was  moving  about 
the  room  with  an  absorbed  look,  to  be  sure  none  of  her 


24  VANISHING  POINTS 

little  belongings  had  escaped  her  in  the  afternoon's 
packing. 

"  That's  the  direct,  simple,  human  thing,"  Sedgwick 
was  saying  to  her,  warmly,  as  if  she  were  to  be  com- 
mended. 

"What  is?"  Aunt  Harriet  inquired.  "There!"  she 
closed  in  triumph,  pouncing  on  a  small  article  lurking 
on  the  table  in  the  shadow  of  the  books.  "There's  my 
spe'tacle-case.  Seems  if  'twould  ruther  hide  away  than 
eat.  Well,  good  night  all.  I've  got  to  be  up  early." 

At  the  door  Ruth,  ardent  as  the  rest  of  them,  de- 
tained her.  "They  think  you're  splendid,  Aunt  Har- 
riet," she  cried.  "Nobody's  seen  how  to  help  your 
cousin  Silas  in  the  right  way,"  she  threw  in  as  a  con- 
cession to  scientific  charity.  "But  you've  done  it. 
You've  taken  him  into  your  own  house." 

Aunt  Harriet  stared  at  her.  ' '  Well, ' '  she  said, ' '  I  just 
happened  to  have  a  house,  that's  all.  If  you've  got  a 
toof,  you  might's  well  call  folks  under  it.  An'  he's  my 
cousin,  ain't  he? — third  cousin,  that  is.  He  ain't  no- 
body else's  cousin  that  I  know  of.  Well,  good  night  all." 

"Did  she  mean,"  Sedgwick  began,  out  of  the  silence 
resultant  on  her  going,  "that  that's  what  the  rest  of 
us  ought  to  do?" 

Ruth  burst  into  a  lovely  laugh.  "Why,  bless  you," 
she  said,  "Aunt  Harriet  doesn't  mean  a  thing.  She 
hasn't  a  theory  to  her  name.  She's  got  a  house  and  a 
third  cousin,  and  the  third  cousin's  got  a  stiff  arm,  and 
she's  just  decent,  that's  all — and  human — and  kind. 
Oh,  I'm  awfully  tired  of  having  things  so  complicated. 
I'm  glad  there  are  two  or  three  people  left  that  live  in 
the  country  and  carry  jelly  to  the  neighbors  when 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CLOISTER  25 

they're  sick,  and  don't  have  to  wonder  whether  elee- 
mosynary jelly  can  hurt  'em.  Oh,  I  don't  mean  you're 
wrong,  Sedgwick,"  she  added,  hastily.  "I  don't  mean 
you're  wrong,  Mr.  Bond.  You  just  have  to  be  intelli- 
gent. I  know  that.  If  you  weren't,  some  of  you,  the  whole 
scheme  would  go  to  smash.  Only  I'm  glad  some  folks — 
Aunt  Harriet,  you  know — I'm  glad  they  don't  have  to." 

Thereupon  she  retired  to  the  window  in  confusion 
and  Bond  thoughtfully  rose  to  go.  "I  fancy  Whit- 
taker's  waiting  out  there  to  say  good-by,"  he  explained. 
"Well,  I  shall  miss  him — I  dare  say  more  than  he 
misses  me." 

Littleton  and  his  wife  followed  him  into  the  hall 
and  said  good  night;  then  the  wife  laid  a  guiding  hand 
on  her  husband's  arm. 

"I  guess  we  might's  well  go  up-stairs  now,"  she  said, 
softly.  "Ruth  feels  kind  of  excited,  speaking  out  so. 
I  guess  she'll  want  to  make  it  up  with  Sedgwick  be- 
fore she  sleeps." 

"What?"  said  Littleton,  staring.    "Oh!" 

Sedgwick  had  gone  to  Ruth.  He  wore  an  eager  look 
of  wishing  to  be  the  one  to  "make  it  up".  "See,"  he 
said  stepping  past  her  to  the  window.  "Orion! " 

She  turned  with  him.  "Yes,"  she  said,  and  then  she 
added  irrepressibly,  "Sedgwick,  before  we've  finished 
with  him — " 

"The  man  in  the  cloister?" 

"Yes.    Tell  me  what  you  got  out  of  it." 

"Out  of  sleeping  there?   Trying  to  sleep?" 

"Yes." 

He  smiled  with  a  whimsical  gravity.  She  was  watch- 
ing his  face,  all  eagerness  herself,  and  it  seemed  to  her 


26  VANISHING  POINTS 

she  had  never  seen  him  look  so  dear,  so  like  an  earlier 
boyish  self.  "Why,"  said  he,  "I  went  there  to  share 
the  other  fellow's  lot.  It  wasn't  a  pose.  I  really  wanted 
to.  But  I  found  all  I  could  think  of — when  I  wasn't 
too  cold  to  think — was  the  stars.  I  hadn't  seen  so  much 
of  them  since  we  lived  in  the  country.  I  planned  a 
poem.  I  thought  so  hard  about  it  I  couldn't  think  of 
the  man  in  the  cloister  at  all.  It's  to  be  f  A  Drama  of 
Stars'.  It's  what  the  morning  stars  thought,  and 
Adam  and  Eve  come  in.  And  Eve  is  you." 

"I?" 

"  Yes,  every  time.    Adam  was  I  and  Eve  was  you." 

She  was  trembling,  he  saw,  but  she  turned  away 
with  dignity  enough. 

"Then  to-night,"  he  said,  through  an  awkwardness 
fitted  to  his  detaining  touch  upon  her  arm,  "she  finished 
it." 

"Aunt  Harriet?" 

"Yes." 

Ruth  nodded.  She  felt  that  also,  though  she  won- 
dered whether  he,  any  more  than  she,  could  chart  the 
course  of  Aunt  Harriet's  influence.  But  he  was  ready 
to  essay  it. 

"She's  such  a  brick!"  he  said,  groping.  "She's  so 
warm,  so  quick  somehow.  She  darts  through  while 
the  rest  of  us  are  laying  out  the  road,  and  you  look  up 
and  she's  there.  When  she  said  that  about  roofs,  she 
seemed  to  be  drawing  pictures  for  us.  She  made  me 
see  little  houses  in  the  country,  sheltering  roofs,  doors 
always  open.  I  wanted  one.  I  wanted  just  a  house, 
Ruth,  where  I  could  see  the  stars  and  then  go  in  and 
write  about  'em.  I  want  it  now — with  you." 


MOTHER 

BUT,  Lilian/ '  said  Mrs.  Hall,  "stay  here  and  have 
your  tea  with  me." 
They  were  in  the  sombrely  furnished  drawing- 
room  of  the  city  house,  a  monument  to  good  taste  be- 
fore the  sixties — two  middle-aged  women  who  had  been 
schoolmates  together  and  who  had  seen  each  other  at 
long  intervals  for  forty  years.  The  hostess,  Mrs.  Hall, 
had  the  advantage  of  a  year  or  two  over  her  friend,  but 
she  had  so  ignored  any  amenity  time  might  show  her, 
and  had  walked  so  steadfastly  and  patiently  toward 
the  acquiescence  of  age,  at  the  same  time  adopting, 
almost  lovingly,  the  insignia,  in  cut  and  fabric,  once 
belonging  to  it,  that  now  she  seemed  much  the  elder. 
This  was  all  in  her  general  effect  when  one  noted  her 
black  dress,  the  soft  line  of  white  at  neck  and  wrist, 
and  the  little  triangle  of  lace  on  her  frosted  waves  of 
hair.  She  was  a  beautiful  creature  given  almost  in- 
dulgently over  to  Age,  as  if  he  could  not  hurt  her  and 
might  as  well  throw  his  trappings  round  her  if  that  had 
been  judged  to  be  the  custom;  her  blue  eyes  were  alive 
with  a  light  which  is  the  love  of  everything  created, 
the  dark  brows  over  them  never  frowning,  but  only 
strengthening  a  face  that  promised  to  be  too  gentle, 
and  her  mouth  smiling  most  sweetly.  Artists  had 
loved  and  painted  and  praised  her,  until  she  privately 
declared  to  her  son — her  one  confidant — that  she  could- 

27 


28  VANISHING  POINTS 

n't  see  what  possessed  them.  She  had  been  accounted 
plain  in  her  youth.  This  must  be  a  form  of  kindly 
modern  homage  to  old  age. 

Mrs.  Kimball,  her  friend,  was  young  with  a  differ- 
ence. She  had  grown  portly  and  fought  that  infliction 
by  every  means  known  to  modern  theory,  save  relin- 
quishing the  indulgences  of  the  table.  She  was  so 
massaged  and  creamed  and  powdered,  so  alight  with 
barbaric  chains  on  a  broad  lace-bound  bosom,  and  so 
evidently  sworn  not  to  be  cajoled  out  of  youth  into 
the  next  territory,  that  Mrs.  Hall  sat  looking  at  her 
with  a  kind  of  pain.  She  was  wondering  uneasily 
whether  she  herself  had  changed  so  visibly  as  Lilian, 
and  then,  with  an  undercurrent  of  amusement  and  a 
little  frown,  remembered  the  artists  and  their  praise, 
and  gave  the  riddle  up. 

"I  want  you  to  go  with  me,"  Mrs.  Kimball  was 
insisting.  "Just  for  a  cup  of  tea  at  Hervier's.  You 
know  Hervier's,  don't  you?" 

Mrs.  Hall  frowned  again,  in  recollecting. 

"Why,  yes,"  she  said.  "It's  that  very  fashionable 
place,  isn't  it,  where  people  drop  in  after  the  matinees? 
And  there's  music,  and — oh,  I  don't  know  what  all!" 

"Yes,  and  you've  heard  of  it  and  never  wanted  to 
go.  Isn't  that  like  you,  Rebecca?" 

"I  have  my  tea  at  home,"  said  Rebecca,  smiling  at 
her,  with  a  recognition  of  human  differences.  "You 
know,  really,  Lil,  I've  lived  in  the  country  so  long  I 
don't  care  much  for  afternoon  tea.  And  I  turn  my 
dinner  into  a  kind  of  supper,  and  have  my  tea  with  it. 
There!" 

"What  does  your  son  say?" 


MOTHER  29 

"Oh,  he  just  laughs  and  goes  on  with  his  dinner.  I 
have  some  toast,  extra,  you  know,  and  a  little  preserve 
and  a  mite  of  cake.  I  never  did  care  much  about  eating 
at  night." 

"It's  a  part  of  your  country  habits."  Mrs.  Kimball 
was  twisting  her  soft  wrist  with  difficulty  to  consult 
the  watch  strapped  to  it  by  gilded  chains.  "Haven't 
you  ever  regretted  living  out  of  the  world  so  long?" 

"Never.    I  wish  I  were  out  of  it  now." 

"Why  aren't  you?" 

"Well,  you  see  I  came  away  when  Gil  went  to  college, 
and  now  he  has  his  studio  here.  Oh,  no,  I  couldn't  be 
happy  away  from  him.  He  wouldn't  like  it  either." 

"But  you  let  him  go  abroad  alone." 

Mrs.  Hall  gave  way  to  sudden  merriment. 

"I  made  him.  I  was  afraid  he'd  get  to  feeling  he  was 
mother's  pet." 

Mrs.  Kimball  always  sat  very  straight  to  obviate 
the  effect  of  her  rotundities,  but  now  she  lifted  herself 
higher  with  the  access  of  a  difficult  resolve. 

"Well,  you  know,  Rebecca,"  she  said,  "I  came  home 
on  the  steamer  with  Gilbert." 

Mrs.  Hall  nodded,  in  approval  of  so  pleasant  a  con- 
junction. 

"Yes,  I  know,"  she  said.  "He  was  so  glad  to  find 
you  were  sailing." 

"Well,  he  took  precious  little  pains  to  gladden  him- 
self further  when  we  had  sailed." 

Mrs.  Hall  flushed  and  her  brows  came  together  in 
concern. 

"Oh,  I'm  sorry,  Lil.    He  wasn't  rude  to  you?" 

"He  wasn't  rude,  but  he  was  cloistered.     Nobody 


30  VANISHING  POINTS 

could  get  near  him.  Everybody  wanted  to.  He's  hand- 
some as  a  god." 

The  mother  drew  a  little  satisfied  breath. 

" Isn't  he  a  giant?"  she  said,  though  her  eyes  com- 
mitted her  to  more.  "Yes,  people  do  notice  him,  of 
course.  He's  so  big,  for  one  thing.  They  can't  help 
seeing  him." 

"I  was  sorry  he  was  so  much  in  evidence.  He  seems 
to  be  a  curiously  unworldly  kind  of  boy.  Not  self- 
conscious  at  all.  Not  in  the  least  prudent  about  being 
looked  at.  He  doesn't  know  the  first  principles  of  cau- 
tion." 

Mrs.  Hall  drew  her  brows  together  again  in  their 
look  of  perplexity.  This  all  sounded  like  commenda- 
tion, and  yet  she  was  perfectly  conscious  that  it  was 
not :  that  it  was,  in  some  sort,  flaunted  before  her  like 
a  danger  signal. 

"What  is  it,  Lilian?"  she  asked,  with  the  quietude 
of  one  in  an  assured  position  toward  life  and  what  it 
can  do  or  threaten.  "What  do  you  want  to  tell  me 
about  Gil?  You  haven't  come  here  to  praise  him." 

Mrs.  Kimball  laughed  with  an  accented  robustness. 

"I  haven't  come  to  do  the  other  thing,"  she  declared, 
in  a  lively  tone  that  sought  to  carry  reassurance  with 
it.  "I  admired  him,  I  can  assure  you,  quite  particu- 
larly. But  I  was  hardly  ever  so  surprised  in  my  life 
that  a  boy  of  his  look  of — well,  you  know  his  kind  of 
look.  You're  perfectly  well  aware  that  he  looks  as  if 
he'd  been  born  to  things  and  had  them  all  his  life,  as 
he  has.  I  was  surprised,  Beck,  to  find  he  was  so 
simple." 

Rebecca  was  gazing  straight  at  her  out  of  blue,  un- 


MOTHER  31 

smiling  eyes,  yet  not  sternly,  but  as  if  the  sincere  eyes 
meant  to  challenge  the  same  clarity  in  the  glance  they 
met. 

"  How  is  he  simple,  Lilian?"  she  asked. 

"Why,  he's  so  unworldly.  He  takes  such  frightful 
risks." 

"I  wish,"  said  Mrs.  Hall,  patiently,  "you'd  tell  me 
what  you  mean.  You're  complaining  of  Gil.  I  can  see 
that." 

Her  friend's  high  color  began  to  intensify  itself  un- 
necessarily. It  had  exceeded  the  bounds  devoted  to 
good  health  or  beauty,  and  seemed  to  be  the  signal  of 
embarrassment. 

"I  hope  you  know  how  interested  I  am  in  every- 
thing that  concerns  you,  Rebecca,"  she  began,  awk- 
wardly. "I  never  forget  old  times." 

"No,"  said  Rebecca.  She  was  leaning  a  little  now 
on  her  chair  back,  as  if  she  needed  it  to  support  her, 
and  had  folded  her  hands  with  a  gentle  grace  in  her 
lap.  "I'm  sure  you  don't  forget  old  times,  Lily.  We 
don't  either  of  us.  You've  been  a  faithful 
friend." 

"I  mean  to  be  a  friend  still.  That's  why  I've  come. 
Rebecca,  do  you  happen  to  know  anything  about 
Vivian  Bruce?" 

Mrs.  Hall  shook  her  head.  She  could  not  yet  see 
how  the  inquiry  pertained,  and  yet  Lilian's  continued 
fluster  made  it  evident  that  it  did. 

"That's  just  like  you,  Beck.  I'd  have  been  willing 
to  bet  you  didn't." 

Mrs.  Hall  smiled  a  little  as  at  something  she  had 
heard  before. 


32  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Well,  you  needn't  scold  me  if  I  don't!"  she  depre- 
cated, prettily.       "I'm  willing   to   know  about   her 


now." 


"I'm  afraid  you'll  have  to.  Now  think,  Rebecca, 
think  back  a  minute.  Haven't  you  read  a  word  about 
her?  Two  divorce  suits,  one  husband  that  shot  him- 
self, one  that  went  to  India  and  got  killed,  everybody 
says  because  he  couldn't  bear  to  live  and  lose  her — 
haven't  you  read  that?" 

Mrs.  Hall  shook  her  head  definitively. 

"Well,  I've  no  patience  with  you." 

"I  don't  read  much  in  the  daily  papers.  Gil  keeps 
me  posted  about  things  I  ought  to  know.  All  this 
winter  I've  been  reading  about  the  tune  of  Queen 
Elizabeth." 

"Queen  Elizabeth!  And  here's  your  son — well,  all 
I  can  say  is,  Vivian  Bruce's  life  is  as  absorbing  as 
Queen  Elizabeth's  and  all  the  rest  of  them  in  any  novel 
or  any  history — why,  it  is  history.  You'd  better  leave 
your  Queen  Elizabeths  and  see  what's  doing  in  New 
York  under  your  nose  this  very  day." 

"I  sha'n't  need  to,  Lil.    You'll  tell  me." 

Mrs.  Kimball  smiled  perfunctorily  with  her  friend, 
and  again  consulted  her  watch. 

"Well,  the  long  and  short  of  it  is,"  she  continued, 
somewhat  in  haste,  "Vivian  is  a  charmer.  She's  beauti- 
ful and  she's  got  that  particular  way  with  her,  and 
she's  an  adventuress,  straight.  If  you  turned  her  into 
the  Garden  of  Eden,  she  wouldn't  stay  there.  She'd 
get  the  Serpent  to  let  her  out,  and  he'd  do  it,  and  he 
wouldn't  be  satisfied  with  that.  He'd  go  with  her. 
She's  a  woman  that  likes  the  drama,  something  doing, 


MOTHER  33 

and  it's  always  emotional.  Don't  you  see?  She  sticks 
at  nothing.  She's  dangerous." 

"Dear  me!"  said  Mrs.  Hall,  pleasantly.  A  light  had 
risen  in  her  eyes.  She  looked,  for  the  first  time,  slightly 
on  guard.  "  She  sounds  like  history  herself .  Seems  to 
me  I've  read  something  like  that,  'way  back  in  Egypt, 
or  Troy." 

Mrs.  Kimball  made  an  impatient  movement  of  her 
hand  in  its  constricting  glove. 

"I  don't  know  anything  about  that.  I  don't  have 
time  to  read.  But  I  suppose  they've  always  existed, 
and  we've  got  to  make  the  best  of  it.  Well,  she  crossed 
with  us." 

"With  you?" 

"With  all  of  us.    Particularly  with  your  Gilbert." 

Mrs.  Hall  did  not  move  by  an  instant  of  trembling, 
and  her  eyes,  with  their  look  of  observant  interest, 
remained  quietly  upon  her  friend's. 

"You  mean  Gilbert  met  her?"  she  asked. 

"Yes,  for  the  first  time.  I  fully  believe  it  was  the 
first  time.  But  she  selected  him — it's  her  custom  to 
fix  upon  one  man  or  another — and  through  the  whole 
voyage  he  didn't  leave  her  side." 

"She  must  be  very  attractive,"  murmured  the 
mother. 

"Attractive?  Don't  I  tell  you  she's  a  serpent?  We 
don't  know  anything  about  such  women,  you  and  I. 
We  don't  see  how  they  do  it.  We  may  wish  we  did" 
— she  stopped  for  an  instant,  dashed  by  that  cool 
attention  in  the  other  face — "well,  we  don't, 
that's  all.  Only  it's  something  they're  born  with. 
And  when  a  man  finds  himself  up  against  it,  par- 


34  VANISHING  POINTS 

ticularly  a  young  man,  it  spells  ruin,  Beck,  just 
ruin."  " 

"Do  you  mean,"  asked  her  friend  evenly,  "that 
Gilbert  wishes  to  marry  her?" 

Mrs.  Kimball  gave  a  little  shriek  and  threw  up  her 
hands. 

" Marry!  Good  gracious,  child,  men  don't  marry 
Vivian  Bruce!" 

"But  you  tell  me  she's  been  married  twice  already." 

"That's  precisely  why  she  can't  be  again,  to  any- 
body who  doesn't  want  to  damn  himself.  It  isn't 
marriage  I'm  afraid  of,  Beck.  It's  seeing  your  boy 
lying  dead  with  a  hole  in  his  forehead,  like  that  young 
Simpson  at  Monte  Carlo.  He  got  tangled  up  with 
precisely  that  kind  of  creature — only  not  so  fetching. 
Heavens,  no!  But  just  as  unscrupulous." 

"Did  you  see  young  Simpson?"  asked  Rebecca, 
with  an  amiable  interest  that  might  have  been  exercised 
to  draw  the  line  of  thought  away  from  this  particular 
phase.  Lilian  suspected  it  at  once,  and  sat  looking  at 
her  with  an  arrested  wonder,  as  if  she  had  begun  to 
accuse  her  friend  of  more  cleverness  than  had  been 
apparent  in  forty  years. 

"Of  course  I  didn't  see  him,"  she  said,  impatiently. 
1 '  But  other  people  did.  It  was  in  the  papers.  And  your 
Gilbert,  if  I  read  him  at  all,  is  exactly  the  same  sort  of 
fellow — quick,  mettlesome,  ready  to  dare  everything 
he  has  for  a  passion.  Why,  his  brazen  absorption  in 
her  on  board  ship  shows  what  he'd  do.  And  the  boy 
has  a  good  look,  Beck.  It  went  to  my  heart.  It  wasn't 
only  because  he's  your  boy.  I  felt  he  ought  to  be 
saved." 


MOTHER  35 

Mrs.  Hall  bent  suddenly  forward  and  laid  a  hand  on 
her  friend's  knee. 

"You're  a  dear,  Lilian,"  she  said,  in  a  voice  quite 
caressing  in  its  affectionate  gratitude.  "Now  I'm  really 
going  to  give  you  some  tea." 

Mrs.  Kimball  drew  a  breath,  since  the  worst  of  the 
interview  was  over.  Yet  she  did  look  worried  still, 
having  more  to  venture  and  finding  she  must  brace 
herself  to  press  it. 

"No,"  she  said;  "you're  coming  with  me  to  Her- 


vier's. ' 


Mrs.  Hall  rose  with  her,  and  stood  for  a  moment, 
her  delicate  hand  on  the  chair  back  as  if  she  needed  it 
to  stay  her. 

"Very  well,"  she  said.  "I  will."  There  was  a  certi- 
tude of  calm  in  her  voice;  she  seemed  to  be  accepting  a 
test  of  her  own  courage  or  endurance,  and  after  that 
moment  of  halting  by  the  chair  as  if  she  might  demand 
continued  support,  she  turned  and  walked  to  the  door 
with  a  dignified  precision  of  step  and  the  grace  of  her 
erect  slenderness. 

"Well,"  said  Mrs.  Kimball  to  herself,  with  a  breath, 
"that's  over;"  and  then  she  became  aware  that 
in  her  haste  she  had  said  it  while  her  friend  could 
hear. 

Mrs.  Hall  was  presently  back  again,  gloved  and 
ready,  in  her  little  bonnet  and  its  long  veil,  and  Mrs. 
Kimball  noted  that  the  swift  preparation  she  had  made 
allowed  no  time  for  the  slightest  breakdown.  When 
they  went  out  together  she  was  wondering  whether 
Rebecca  had  a  marvellous  endurance  or  whether  she 
were  really  ignorant  of  the  color  of  certain  things.  Her 


36  VANISHING  POINTS 

own  courage  was  wavering,  and  they  drove  away  to 
Hervier's  talking  of  the  day  with  its  flavor  of  later 
summer,  and  once,  for  quite  five  minutes,  of  a  magical 
conserve  Mrs.  Hall  had  been  making  of  raspberries 
and  ginger  and  lemon  and  a  set  of  as  unlikely  potmates. 
When  it  came  to  the  conserve,  Mrs.  Kimball  listened  to 
her  with  a  frank  astonishment.  She  had  no  tune  for 
affairs  of  the  household,  and  it  filled  her  with  unstinted 
wonder  to  hear  a  woman  who  had  been  asked  to  ap- 
proach a  coming  blur  on  her  son's  fame  talking  gently 
of  quantities  and  periods  of  boiling. 

At  Hervier's  it  was  the  chosen  time  of  day  for  idle- 
ness and  fashion.  In  the  long  room  with  its  little  white 
tables,  shadowed  and  flickered  upon  by  the  green  of 
moving  leaves,  with  the  subdued  liquid  dropping  of 
harp  music,  there  were  men  and  women  everywhere, 
childishly  busy  in  the  hunt  for  pleasure.  It  seemed 
to  be  a  show  of  the  elect  in  costume  and  the  soft  sweep 
of  feathers,  the  waving  and  glossing  of  hair.  Mrs. 
Kimball  looked  about  her  in  an  anxiously  scrutinizing 
way,  and  after  rejecting  the  offer  of  two  or  three  tables, 
finally  selected  one  overlooking  the  entire  room.  There 
she  placed  her  friend,  and  instead  of  taking  the  opposite 
seat,  had  her  own  chair  moved  to  the  end  of  the  table 
so  that  she  also  could  approximately  command  the 
scene.  Then,  her  order  given,  she  leaned  back  and 
looked.  Mrs.  Hall  gazed  also,  with  a  child-like  curios- 
ity. She  could  only  compare  it,  drawing  upon  the  simple 
images  of  a  sober  lif  e  like  hers,  to  the  opera,  where  she 
was  accustomed  to  see  raiment  of  incredible  splendor. 
The  comparison  was  not  inapt,  for  this  was  the  over- 
flow from  a  brilliant  matine'e. 


MOTHER  37 

"This  is  very  pretty,"  she  kept  saying— "very  pretty. 
I'm  so  indebted  to  you." 

Mrs.  Kimball  watched  and  did  not  answer;  but  pres- 
ently her  pose  relaxed  and  she  gave  a  little  exclamation 
and  laid  her  hand  on  her  friend's  wrist.  Mrs.  Hall 
glanced  at  her,  followed  her  look,  and  started  slightly. 
Two  persons  were  walking  down  the  room,  a  man  and 
woman,  he  equipped  with  a  comely  strength,  the  inno- 
cent bravery  of  youth  and  she  in  the  studied  insolence 
which  meets  the  world's  contumely  with  a  hard  con- 
sciousness of  its  own  endowment,  the  army  of  charms 
it  has  to  fight  with,  and  the  certainty  that  in  all  tune 
that  soldiery  will  never  be  without  power  in  the  field. 

"There!"  breathed  Mrs.  Kimball. 

"Oh,"  said  her  friend,  with  a  cool  and  pretty  in- 
terest, "there's  Gilbert.  Is  that  his  friend?" 

"Yes.    It's  Vivian  Bruce." 

Mrs.  Hall  lifted  her  eye-glasses  hanging  by  their; 
thread  of  a  chain  and  set  them  on  her  nose.  She  fol- 
lowed the  two  superb  figures  down  the  room  to  their 
conspicuous  seat  by  a  fountain  at  the  end.  "What 
lovely  hair!"  she  said,  in  quite  an  unaffected  interest. 
"And  what  a  gorgeous  dress!" 

Lilian  Kimball  looked  at  her  now  in  a  puzzled  ques- 
tioning. She  had  dismissed  Gilbert  and  his  drama  to 
wonder  again  whether  Rebecca  was  not  more  of  a 
woman  of  the  world  than  she  had  thought.  Or  was  she 
too  simple  to  read  the  import  of  these  things?  Or  was 
she,  under  her  saint's  guise,  too  worldly  to  balk  at 
them?  That,  though  it  might  prove  venial  in  some 
women,  would  be  monstrous  in  her.  But  Rebecca  was 
speaking,  with  a  pretty,  gracious  uplift  of  the  voice. 


38  VANISHING  POINTS 

^l   < 

"  Lilian,  it's  very  rude — I  wouldn't  do  it  if  the  cir- 
cumstances weren't  exactly  as  they  are — but  I'm  going 
to  ask  you  to  drink  your  tea  alone  and  let  me  go  to 
them." 

"  Go  to  them!   Have  tea  with  them?  " 

Mrs.  Hall  nodded,  smilingly  shutting  up  her  eye- 
glass as  she  spoke  and  tucking  it  into  its  accustomed 
nest  of  folds. 

"  Rebecca,  you  can't  have  tea  with  her.  She's  no- 
torious." 

Mrs.  Hall  laughed  a  little  in  an  amused,  sweet  way. 
"Well,  I'm  not  notorious.  Gil  isn't  either." 

Her  friend  laid  an  anxious  hand  on  her  arm. 

"Rebecca,"  she  breathed,  "you  won't  make  a  scene?" 

Rebecca  laughed  outright. 

"You're  a  goose,  Lil,"  she  said. 

"You  see,"  Mrs.  Kimball  went  on,  in  a  distracted 
whisper,  "they're  the  most  conspicuous  people  in  the 
room.  She  is  always,  everywhere  she  goes,  and  she's 
been  here  with  him  two  days  running,  to  my  knowledge. 
They  were  here  yesterday  and  here  the  day  before. 
She  likes  to  bring  him,  to  display  him.  I  made  up  my 
mind  to  get  you  here.  I  knew  they'd  be  here  after 
Tristan" 

"There,  you  see!  you've  brought  me,  and  I've  spied 
the  lady  and  I  want  to  know  her." 

"Don't  you  see  people  looking  at  them?" 

"Yes.    No  wonder.    They're  very  handsome." 

"Well,  they'll  look  at  you,  too,  if  you  go  down  there." 

"I've  got  on  my  best  bonnet  and  good  gloves.  Don't 
I  look  nice  enough?"  There  was  a  pretty  moment  of 
intent  query  in  her  look,  and  then  she  went  sailing 


MOTHER  39 

away  with  her  indeterminate  grace,  which  was  a  girl's 
endowment,  after  all,  down  the  long  room  with  couples 
and  athwart  them,  and  made  her  way  directly  to  the 
table. 

Gil  was  talking  when  she  got  there.  He  had  a  flushed 
face  and  ardent  eyes,  and  her  heart  leaped  at  the  sight 
of  him,  his  beauty  and  the  strange  look  he  always 
wore,  in  a  sophisticated  crowd,  of  being  one  set  apart 
by  healthier  living,  or,  in  some  form,  a  more  sound 
inheritance.  He  glanced  up  at  her  as  she  halted,  black- 
robed,  beside  him,  and  his  lips  stayed  parted  with  the 
words  they  meant  to  utter.  The  woman,  too,  looked 
up  at  her,  and  Rebecca  Hall  felt  another  pang,  an 
especial  and  choking  one,  over  her,  her  airy  supple 
grace,  the  distinction  of  her  bright  hair  and  beautiful 
hands,  and  the  challenge  in  the  great  gray  eyes  and  the 
mobile  lips,  not  full,  but  curved  until  the  heart  might 
faint  in  following  them.  Then  Gilbert  was  on  his  feet, 
and  his  mother  had  said  with  her  unabashed  simplicity: 

"Tin  going  to  have  my  tea  with  you.  Introduce  us, 
won't  you?" 

He  did  it,  blunderingly,  out  of  a  rash  certainty  that 
in  some  way  he  should  have,  as  well,  to  terminate  the 
combination;  but  his  mother  had  waived  all  possibili- 
ties but  that  of  her  coming  tea,  and  was  seated  between 
him  and  Vivian  Bruce,  telling  how  she  had  seen  them 
by  chance  and  left  her  own  table  because  theirs  seemed 
cozier.  Vivian  Bruce  was  looking  at  her  with  distended 
eyes.  At  first  she  was  slightly  on  her  guard,  a  little 
sharp  from  furtive  seeking  for  motives  behind  the  ap- 
parent one;  but  as  the  older  woman  went  on  with  her 
harmless  flow  of  commonplace  she  broke  in  and  joined 


40  VANISHING  POINTS 

them.  She  was  the  first  to  gather  up  her  gloves  and 
make  a  move  to  go. 

"I  shall  have  to  leave  you,"  she  said,  sweetly.  "My 
car  is  at  the  door.  I'm  going  to  drive  myself.  No," 
she  added,  definitively,  as  Gilbert  rose  with  her,  "I 
don't  want  you,  please." 

His  mother,  too,  had  risen. 

"I  wish  you  wanted  me,"  she  said  to  Vivian.  "I 
wish  you'd  take  me  home." 

"Mother!"  Gilbert  was  evidently  warning  her,  but 
she  did  not  look  at  him.  Her  eyes  were  on  the  other 
face,  suddenly  alive  with  pleasure. 

"Would  you  really  let  me?"  said  Vivian  Bruce. 
"  I'd  be  so  glad." 

So  they  went  up  the  room  together  past  Lilian  Kim- 
ball,  whom  Mrs.  Hall  somehow  failed  to  see  until  the 
last  instant  for  squeezing  in  a  bow,  and  Gilbert  had 
put  them  into  the  car,  and  stood  bareheaded  on  the 
sidewalk  looking  at  them.  His  mother  knew  that  look. 
It  was  his  beseeching  yet  confident  gaze,  as  of  a  dog 
who  hardly  likes  to  bark  for  what  he  wants,  yet  knows 
he  is  too  popular  to  run  much  risk  of  losing  it.  But 
that  one  tune  he  was  going  to  lose  it. 

"Run  along,  Gil,"  said  his  mother.  "Call  at  Aunt 
Josephine's  on  the  way,  will  you,  and  tell  her  I  want  to 
know  about  her  cold?"  Then  the  two  women  were 
driving  off  together  between  the  lights  coming  out  to 
meet  the  western  flare,  and  she  went  on,  still  cozily:  "I 
made  up  that  errand.  Really,  I  didn't  want  him. 
Three  can't  get  acquainted.  Two  can,  I  think;  don't 
you?" 

Vivian  Bruce  stiffened  a  little  under  her  furs. 


MOTHER  41 

"It  isn't  accident,  then?"  she  said.  "You  came  to 
Hervier's  to  see  me?" 

"No,"  said  Mrs.  Hall.  "But  when  I  saw  you  I  knew 
I'd  got  to  know  you.  Somebody  told  me  my  boy  was 
getting  acquainted  with  you." 

Vivian  sat  looking  straight  ahead,  watching  ab- 
sorbedly  and  driving  fast.  She  smiled  a  little. 

"They  are  very  precious,  aren't  they,"  she  said, 
' '  these  boys?  Your  boys,  all  boys?  " 

"Oh  yes,"  said  the  mother,  simply.  "It  isn't  only 
because  they're  ours;  but  they're  men,  you  see.  They 
belong  to  us  a  little,  but  they  belong  to  other  things 
a  hundred  times  more — their  country,  the  wives  they're 
going  to  marry." 

They  did  not  speak  again  until  the  car  drew  up  at 
Mrs.  Hall's  door,  and  then  Vivian  sprang  gallantly 
out,  and  gave  her  charge  a  sustaining  hand. 

"Come  in,"  said  Mrs.  Hall,  impulsively.  "I  don't 
know  you  any  better  than  I  did  at  the  tea  table.  I 
never  shall,  if  we  go  motoring  together.  I've  got  to 
see  you  by  my  own  fire.  Please." 

Vivian,  who  was  the  taller,  looked  down  at  her  a 
moment,  and  then  acquiesced  bluffly  like  a  charming 
boy. 

"Well,"  said  she,  "I  will." 

So  they  went  up  the  steps,  and  Mrs.  Hall,  without 
ringing  for  service,  made  her  put  off  her  fur  coat  and 
sit  down  at  the  hearth.  Then  she  mended  the  fire 
with  her  own  hands  and  much  skill,  and  suddenly  from 
her  own  chair  looked  across  at  her  visitor. 

"Well,"  she  said,  "isn't  this  funny?" 

Vivian  Bruce,  too,  laughed.    Then  she  sobered. 


42  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Mrs.  Hall,"  she  said,  "you'd  heard  of  me.  You've 
brought  me  here  to  talk  to  me.  Now  haven't  you?" 

"I've  brought  you  because  I'm  simply  so  curious 
about  you  I  couldn't  let  you  go.  That's  the  truth. 
Believe  me." 

"Why  were  you  curious?" 

"Because  you  were  with  Gil.  And  because  he  hadn't 
spoken  about  you." 

Vivian  laughed  a  little,  in  a  hard  way. 

"Does  he  always  speak  about  people?"  she  inquired. 

"'Most  always,"  said  his  mother.  "When  he  thinks 
of  it,  I'm  sure." 

"Then  maybe  he  hasn't  thought  of  it?" 

Vivian  was  questioning  her  now  with  the  full  power 
of  the  gray  eyes  intensified  by  a  light  in  them. 

"Oh  yes,"  said  Mrs.  Hall,  still  quietly.  "He's 
thought  of  you.  Anybody  would,  that  saw  you  once." 

A  flush  crept  into  the  woman's  face  and  awakened 
it  to  a  wistful  life.  She  gave  the  interview  an  unex- 
pected turn. 

"Do  you  think  I'm  so  horrid?"  she  inquired. 

"Horrid?    My  child!" 

"You  think  I'm  conspicuous." 

Mrs.  Hall  looked  at  her  with  a  frank  and  challenging 
scrutiny.  It  was  not  sharp.  It  was  at  once  direct  and 
firm. 

"I  think  you're  very  handsome,"  she  said.  "You're 
the  handsomest  woman  I  ever  saw." 

"But  you  find  a  lot  of  fault  with  me.  I'm  not  even 
handsome  your  way." 

The  humble  voice  was  not,  her  listener  felt  sure, 
assumed  to  meet  the  peculiarities  of  the  situation,  or 


MOTHER  43 

to  reconcile  in  any  manner  their  standards  of  the  beau- 
tiful. It  came  from  something  alive  and  glowing  under 
all  this  bravery  and  glitter. 

"No,"  she  said,  steadily,  "I  don't  find  any  fault 
with  you.  But  I  want  to  know  you." 

"So  you  can  find  fault  if  you  have  to?" 

"Yes.  Or" — the  kindly  voice  warmed  into  a  thrill 
of  whimsical  protest  against  wholesale  relegation  to  a 
world  of  feminine  prejudice — "so  I  can  admire  you  all 
I  want  to." 

The  other  woman  frankly  stared  at  her.  Then  she 
put  out  one  small,  exquisite  foot  to  the  blaze,  drawing 
her  skirt  away  from  it  and  regarding  it  imper- 
sonally. 

"No,"  she  said,  gloomily,  after  a  pause,  "you  won't 
admire  me.  You  can't." 

"Oh,"  cried  the  mother,  quite  unaffectedly,  "I'm 
sorry.  For  I'm  pretty  exacting,  after  all.  If  I  can't, 
I  don't  want  Gil  to." 

Then  they  were  both  silent,  and  presently  Vivian 
looked  up.  She  gave  a  little  sigh. 

"He  doesn't — yet.  Not  as  you're  afraid.  He  truly 
hasn't  begun  to." 

"Were  you — "  the  mother  began,  gently,  and 
stopped. 

"Was  I  going  to  make  him?   Yes,  I  was." 

"Are  you  going  to  now?" 

"I  don't  know.    Yes,  if  I  want  to." 

Again  they  sat  with  their  own  separate  musings,  the 
younger  running  bitterly  back  over  the  unfriendliness 
of  woman  warring  against  woman  for  the  possession 
of  the  other  element  that  did  not  seem  to  her  so  valu- 


44  VANISHING  POINTS 

able,  after  all.  Sometimes  she  wished  she  could  live 
with  women  alone,  breathing  their  affectionate,  cool 
companionship.  Yet  she  knew  it  was  not  possible. 
They  wouldn't  have  her  with  a  perfect  trust,  and  even 
if  they  would,  the  old  call  must  come  sounding  to  her 
out  of  the  necessities  of  things,  and  she  would  go  forth 
from  any  haven  to  find  her  mate  that  was  also,  each 
tune,  her  prey,  as  she  was  his. 

"No,"  she  said,  heavily,  as  if  she  sulked  under  dis- 
cipline, "I  suppose  I  sha'n't.  I  suppose  you  think 
you've  earned  him  by  being  faithful  and  self-sacrificing 
— and  wearing  little  black  bonnets — ' '  Her  voice  broke, 
and  she  added,  out  of  an  impatience  savage  in  its  sud- 
denness and  her  own  inability  to  master  it:  "Oh,  you're 
a  darling  thing.  Take  your  boy.  Take  him  and  be 
done  with  it." 

It  was  like  an  assault  on  the  decorous  shyness  which 
had  wrapped  the  other  woman  all  her  life,  to  find  her 
son,  whom  she  could  not  help  wanting  to  encase  in 
a  privacy  like  her  own,  tossed  back  to  her,  a  chattel 
another  woman  did  not  keep.  But  it  was  only  a  little 
hurt  on  the  outer  skin  of  her  pride.  She  had  long  ago 
learned  that  life  is  a  process  of  bruises  on  vulnerable 
organs,  and  that  she  had  been  tremendously  fortunate 
in  her  seclusion  and  her  protected  state.  She  had  been 
schooling  herself  all  these  years  to  remember  that  Gil- 
bert was  in  the  stress  of  things,  and  that,  if  she  meant 
to  share  his  life  at  all,  she  must  meet  crude  miseries 
without  wincing.  So  it  was  out  of  these  old  resolves 
that  she  spoke,  with  a  gentle  brevity. 

"  You're  not  to  give  up  anything  that's  right  for  you 
both  to  have.  If  he  likes  you — specially — "  Her  voice 


MOTHER  45 

failed  her,  and  Vivian  could  see  that  at  last  one  delicate 
hand  was  trembling. 

"I've  told  you  he  doesn't  care  for  me — ' specially '," 
she  said,  with  a  bluff  kindliness.  "And  I  don't  care 
for  him.  But — suppose  I  did — suppose  we  did — what 
would  you  have  done  then?" 

The  mother's  face  looked  wan  in  sudden  pallor. 
Her  certainties,  her  quietness,  seemed  suddenly  washed 
away  from  it.  One  could  see  it  in  the  utmost  pathos 
of  an  undefended  age. 

"Why,"  she  said,  "I  should  want  you  to  let  me  be 
in  it  with  you." 

"In  it?  He  couldn't  marry  me.  I'm  not  free  to 
marry." 

Mrs.  Hall  was  looking  at  her  with  eyes  that  implored 
her  to  spare  them  both  the  cruder  tests. 

"I  haven't  thought  any  farther,"  she  said.  "Only 
I  have  always  wanted — I  always  meant — if  my  son 
had  attachments,  to  be  as  friendly — as  understand- 
ing— "  Her  voice  failed  her.  She  really  had  no  idea 
how  to  put  her  pure  purpose  into  words. 

"You  mean,  whatever  woman  he  got  attached  to, 
you  intended  to  know  her — to  like  her  if  you  could?" 

"Yes."  The  mother  spoke  with  relief  now  that  her 
intent  was  being  elaborated  for  her. 

"You'd  know  her  socially.  You'd  have  her  here  in 
your  house." 

"I  should  want  to." 

"Any  woman,  you  mean,  any  kind  of  woman?" 

"Yes." 

1 '  Good  God ! ' '  This  was  under  her  breath,  an  exclama- 
tion not  of  blasphemy,  but  of  wonder.  She  was  looking 


46  VANISHING  POINTS 

at  the  pale  face  now,  still  under  its  veil  of  prophetic 
age,  with  a  frank  incredulity.  Suddenly,  while  her  eyes 
met  that  other  wistful  gaze  which  seemed  to  implore  her 
out  of  her  worldly  cunning  to  tell  another  woman  how 
to  be  as  wise,  tears  came  blindingly.  They  hurt  her, 
and  she  pressed  them  back  again  with  closed  lids  and 
an  impatient  hand.  "Well,"  she  said,  "I  hope  you 
won't  come  to  grief,  that's  all.  If  you  do,  I  hope  I  sha'n't 
know  it.  But  you  won't.  Your  boy's  a  good  boy. 
He's  got  an  iron  kind  of  a  will  in  him  too.  See  here." 
She  laughed  a  little  in  that  mocking  self-communion 
of  hers.  "I  can  drop  him;  but  do  you  want  him  to 
drop  me?  Would  that  save  your  pride?  " 

The  other  shook  her  head.  Bigger  things  than  pride 
were  involved,  and  she  did  not  quite  know  the  phrases 
for  explaining  how  poor  a  trapping  she  considered  pride 
to  be. 

"I  can  tell  him,"  Vivian  went  on — "I  can  tell  him 
I  couldn't  stand  his  mother.  I  can  jeer  at  you,  a  little, 
only  a  little.  He'd  take  off  his  hat  and  leave  me." 

"Oh  no,"  she  breathed,  "you  mustn't  do  that." 

"Why  mustn't  I?" 

"He  wouldn't  like  it.    He  wouldn't  like  you." 

"Don't  I  tell  you  he  wouldn't  like  it?  Don't  we  both 
want  him  not  to  like  me?" 

"Oh,  I  do  want  him  to  like  you,"  said  the  other 
woman,  impetuously.  "I  want  him  to  respect  you." 

Vivian  seemed  for  an  instant  to  be  staring  her  down; 
but  her  own  lids  fell  first,  and  again  she  pressed  them 
with  angry  fingers. 

"That's  a  hard  saying,"  she  returned.  "There's 
something  about  a  camel  and  the  eye  of  a  needle."  She 


MOTHER  47 

had  risen  now  and  stood  with  one  foot  on  the  head  of 
the  fire-dog.  "Well,"  she  said,  gravely,  "perhaps  he 
can.  He's  as  queer  as  you  in  some  ways.  Perhaps  he  can. ' ' 

"Oh,  he  does!"  the  mother  declared,  tumultuously. 

"Does  respect  me?    How  do  you  know?" 

"  Oh,  I  know  Gil.    He  wouldn't  like  you  if  he  didn't." 

There  they  stood  staring  at  each  other,  the  mother 
with  such  boundless  belief  in  all  possibilities  openly 
written  in  her  face  that  Vivian  for  one  bewildering  mo- 
ment felt  as  she  sometimes  did  on  a  spring  morning, 
at  her  first  waking,  as  if  the  world  were  new  and  she 
with  it. 

"I'm  going  abroad,"  she  said,  abruptly,  when  the 
dream  snapped.  "He  sha'n't  mope  about  me.  I'll  leave 
him  free  as — free  as  you  want  me  to.  He  sha'n't  sulk. 
He'll  be  a  little  cockier,  that's  all.  He'll  think  he's  proved 
a  model  of  chivalry  and  found  I  was  a  good  fellow." 

She  was  on  her  way  to  the  door,  without  an  offered 
hand-shake,  and  Mrs.  Hall  hastened  after  her. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "that's  good — that's  wonderful — 
but  I  want  you  to  be  free  too.  You're  not — you  could 
tell  me,  you  know — you  won't  miss  him — " 

A  child's  mirth  had  run  over  the  woman's  face  and 
chased  away  certain  lines  that  aged  and  hardened  it. 
She  laid  her  hands  on  her  friend's  shoulders,  held  them 
there  a  moment,  and  then,  stooping,  kissed  both  the 
soft  pale  cheeks. 

"Am  I  in  love  with  him,  you  mean?  No.  I'd  got 
done  being  what  you  call  in  love  when  he  was  fifteen. 
I  sha'n't  ever  see  you  again,  madonna.  Give  me  one 
more  kiss.  In  love?  You  needn't  worry.  Why,  bless 
you!  I'm  in  love  with  you!" 


THE  STORY  OF  ABE 

THERE  is  something  that  all  dogs  know  and  a 
few  men.  It  is  what  gives  the  dog  that  look 
in  the  eyes,  of  unconquerable  love,  of  hope 
even  against  the  fact  of  abuse." 

This  was  what  the  lean  gray-headed  man  with  the 
army  button  said  to  the  rest  of  us  smoking  with  him 
on  the  hotel  veranda.  Then  he  took  out  his  big  worn 
wallet  and  selected  from  it  a  yellowed  paper,  put  on 
his  eye-glasses,  and  scanned  it  frowningly.  "Yes," 
said  he,  "I've  got  that  right.  I  wrote  it  down  some 
years  ago.  I've  tried  to  get  a  little  further  with  it, 
but  I  never  did." 

One  of  the  men  had  just  given  a  dog — his  own  dog — 
a  cuff,  as  he  thought  righteously.  Mac  was  a  sober 
collie,  a  one-man  dog,  with  no  eye  for  any  but  his 
master,  and  he  had,  apparently  without  provocation, 
assaulted  a  nervous  fox-terrier  and  sent  him  away 
yapping,  with  a  salutary  memory  of  rough-shod  teeth. 
And  then  his  master  had  roared  out  and  cuffed  him, 
and  he  had  taken  his  dose  with  a  faultless  bearing  and 
lain  down  in  a  pretence  at  the  degage  "flump"  of  a 
dog  with  nothing  to  do  of  a  shiny  afternoon  but  snap 
at  flies  and  dream  of  battles  won.  He  seemed  not  to 
recognize  in  the  least  that  his  dignity  had  been  assailed; 
but  he  did  give  his  master,  in  the  one  moment  of  accept- 
ing the  cuff,  a  look,  half  remonstrance  and  half  a  divine 

48 


THE  STORY  OF  ABE  49 

reproach.  Even  then  there  was  no  resentment  in  it. 
We  who  had  seen  the  foregoing  provocation — his 
master  had  been  back  to  it — rushed  in  to  say  that 
Mac  hadn't  been  the  offender.  Foxy  had  nagged  him 
and  taken  unwarrantable  liberties  such  as  no  high-bred 
person  could  suffer.  Therefore  Mac  had  done  justly 
in  his  brief  reproof.  The  master  upon  that  bent  down 
and  gave  MacGregor's  forehead  an  apologetic  smooth, 
and  Mac  looked  up  with  that  same  clear  faith  in  the 
mirror  of  his  eyes — f orgetfulness,  too :  yet  he  had  more 
brain,  we  knew,  than  half  of  us,  with  cells  in  it  for 
memory.  Then  it  was  that  the  lean  old  man  who 
always  looked  an-hungered  and  not  able  to  tell  of  it, 
as  if  all  his  heart's  dearest  had  gone  to  Kingdom  Come 
and  he  was  too  busy  deferring  the  desire  of  them  to  have 
any  present  wants,  made  that  remark  I  have  remem- 
bered. 

" What  is  it?"  asked  Mac's  master,  quickly.  "What 
is  it  dogs  know  and  we  don't?  " 

He  was  an  artist  with  slim  brown  hands  and  a  sensi- 
tive face.  I  think  he  was  nettled  at  having  shown  him- 
self impulsive  and  not  having  kept  the  code  with  Mac, 
and  he  wanted  to  find  out  as  much  as  possible  about 
dogs,  as  soon  as  possible. 

"Did  I  ever  tell  you,"  said  the  old  gentleman,  "about 
Colonel  Annerly's  dog?" 

He  never  had.  We  lit  up  again,  those  of  us  who  had 
let  our  pipes  cool,  and  thought  commiseratingly  of 
the  expectation  the  ladies  cherished,  flitting  white- 
skirted  down  to  the  summer-house,  of  seeing  us  pres- 
ently at  afternoon  tea.  There  was  a  decided  antici- 
pation of  something  to  come :  for  the  nice  old  gentleman 


50  VANISHING  POINTS 

with  the  patient  face  hadn't  talked  much  up  to  now, 
and  we  shared  the  feeling  that  he  wouldn't  take  the 
trouble  to  embark  if  it  wasn't  worth  while.  He  looked 
like  the  sort  of  person  who  would  ticket  his  recollections 
and  keep  only  the  ones  that  had  some  assured  value. 
His  mind  was,  I  am  convinced,  so  constantly  on  the 
certainty  of  active  life's  being  over  that  he  wouldn't 
be  apt  to  clutter  up  his  pigeonholes  with  extraneous 
truck.  His  will,  perhaps,  and  a  few,  a  very  few,  in- 
evitable and  sacred  memories,  were  all  he  would  be 
likely  to  concern  himself  with  now. 

"  Colonel  Annerly,"  said  he,  in  the  grave  manner 
of  one  bringing  out  something  exceedingly  precious, 
and  letting  us  note  that  it  would  have  to  be  seriously 
regarded,  "went  all  through  the  war." 

He  said  it  as  they  do  who  made  a  part  of  the 
Rebellion,  as  if  there  were  but  one  war  known  to 
history. 

"We  saw  a  good  deal  of  each  other.  I  was  a  private 
when  he  was  a  lieutenant.  But  we  had  friends  in  com- 
mon. He  was  a  Virginian:  good  blood,  very  good 
blood.  By  the  way,  Annerly  wasn't  his  name.  I 
shouldn't  take  the  liberty — Annerly's  my  name." 

"After  the  war  was  over,"  he  went  on,  "I  didn't 
see  him  again  for  maybe  twenty  years;  and  then  one 
summer  I  went  up  with  my — people" — he  made  a 
little  pause  here,  a  reverent  pause,  and  it  was  evident 
that  his  people  were  dead — "to  a  little  town  in  Vermont 
— near  Mansfield.  Nice  little  town  it  was,  a  good 
hotel.  Burned  since.  And  Mansfield  is  a  very  beautiful 
mountain.  The  sunrises  there — ah,  well!" 

He  lost  himself  a  moment,  patently  in  memory,  and 


THE  STORY  OF  ABE  51 

then  Mac  got  up,  snapped  at  a  fly,  and  threw  himself 
down  again.    That  recalled  him. 

"Ah!"  he  brightened.  "What  was  I  saying?  That 
summer  in  Vermont.  Well,  Colonel  Annerly  was  there. 
The  first  sight  I  had  of  him  was  one  morning  when  I 
was  setting  out  for  a  little  walk.  It  was  market  day; 
country  folks  brought  in  calves  and  pigs,  and  there  was 
a  prodigious  roaring  and  squalling  and  cackling  all 
the  forenoon  long,  and  about  three  they  set  off  home 
again  without  the  calves  and  pigs,  with  plugs  of  tobacco, 
and  tea  and  sugar,  and  flat  bottles,  and  the  misses  had 
their  ribbons,  I  suppose.  Well,  this  day  nobody 
seemed  to  be  buying  anything  for  a  minute,  but  they 
all  stood  knotted  in  a  crowd  and  everybody  was 
laughing.  And  I  looked  up  where  they  were  looking, 
up  in  a  balcony  of  a  little  tavern  there — not  my  hotel ; 
that  was  bigger — but  a  very  little  tavern  indeed — and 
there  was  Colonel  Annerly  making  a  speech,  and  he 
was  drunk,  gentleman,  drunk  as  a  lord.  I  stopped. 
I  couldn't  believe  my  eyes.  ' Who's  that?'  I  says  to  a 
man — he  looked  like  an  ostler — with  a  rope  in  his  hand. 
He  was  going  from  stable  to  pump,  and  stopped  to  listen 
and  grin.  'That's  Colonel  Annerly/  says  he.  'What's 
he  doing  here?'  says  I.  'He  lives  here/  says  he.  'No, 
be  doesn't/  says  I.  I  was  pretty  stupid  over  it  all,  but 
I  never  imagined  the  Colonel  outside  his  State.  'He's 
a  Virginian/  I  guess  I'd  thought  of  him  in  'marble 
halls'  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  I'm  only  a  plain 
New-Englander  myself.  'Oh,'  says  the  man,  'his 
mother  was  a  Vermont  girl,  and  after  the  war  the 
Colonel  and  Miss  Sally — that's  his  sister — they  come 
up  here.  I  guess  they  were  burnt  out  o'  house  and 


52  VANISHING  POINTS 

home,  and  'twas  all  they  could  do.'  He  went  along 
to  the  pump,  and  I  stared  at  the  Colonel  and  listened 
to  him,  and  while  I  listened  I  got  pretty  hot." 

He  looked  it  then.  His  blue  eyes  were  sharp  as  the 
flash  on  steel.  His  nervous  hand,  with  the  little  gnarls 
at  the  joints,  began  beating  on  the  veranda  rail. 

"He  was  making  a  speech  about  the  war.  It  was 
a  good  speech.  It  would  have  been  if  he'd  been  sober; 
but  he  was  drunk,  and  every  tomfool  among  'em 
laughed :  not  because  he  said  anything  to  laugh  at,  but 
because  he  was  drunk.  And  while  I  looked  at  him  I 
realized  he'd  changed,  the  Colonel  had.  'Twas  more 
than  middle  age.  He  was  a  handsome  man,  a  very 
personable  man.  But  his  face  had  got  a  little  bloated, 
and  his  hair  had  whitened  and  he'd  let  it  grow — well, 
it  made  me  sick.  You  see,  I'd  seen  him  on  a  horse." 

His  mouth  flickered  into  a  spasm  of  the  pain  it  had 
all  given  him,  but  he  went  quickly  on  like  a  man  who 
has  undertaken  a  dolorous  task  that  must,  he  being 
methodical  and  stout-willed,  be  finished. 

"Then  he  stopped.  The  Colonel  stopped.  He'd 
looked  up  the  street,  and  there  walking  along,  from 
the  post-office,  I  knew — I  went  there  myself  every 
day — was  an  old  lady,  about  as  old  as  he  was,  and  thin 
and  white-haired  and  dressed  in  black  silk,  and  I 
guessed  who  it  was — Miss  Sally.  The  Colonel  took 
off  his  hat — he  wore  a  big  gray  felt — and  just  at  that 
minute  out  tumbles  a  dog,  a  kind  of  a  nice,  good-sized 
yellowish  mongrel,  part  collie,  too — the  kind  you  re- 
spect— from  the  window  behind  him  and  began  to 
bark  like  all  possessed.  The  Colonel  yelled  at  him  and 
the  tomfools  began  to  clap — it  seemed  to  be  a  terrible 


THE  STORY  OF  ABE  53 

funny  joke  that  the  dog  was  making  a  speech,  too — 
and  when  the  Colonel  couldn't  stop  the  creature  by 
yelling,  he  struck  at  him  with  his  hat,  and  then,  I 
believe,  he  kicked  him" — this  he  offered  delicately, 
as  if  it  were  ticklish  business  to  remember  with  an 
unjustly  disgraced  person  like  Mac  at  hand — "and 
finally  the  Colonel  sat  down  in  a  chair  on  the  balcony 
and  fanned  himself  with  his  hat,  and  the  dog  lay  down 
beside  him  at  once,  gentlemen,  and  dropped  his  head 
for  a  snooze,  as  if  there  hadn't  the  least  thing  in  the 
world  happened.  And  the  old  lady  kept  her  head  up 
in  the  air  and  walked  by  as  if  it  was  nothing  in  the 
world  to  her.  But  I  knew  it  was  Miss  Sally.  Well, 
I  didn't  let  many  hours  slip  before  I  went  round  to  see 
the  Colonel.  Not  that  day.  I  gave  him  time — " 
Here  he  paused,  rather  at  a  loss,  and  a  younger  man 
of  the  company,  too  young  to  remember  other  years 
and  manners  when  there  were  simpler  if  cruder  names 
for  things,  supplied  a  flippant  modernism  for  getting 
over  a  jag — and  the  old  gentleman  instantly  frowned 
at  him.  We  frowned  too,  all  of  us,  partly  in  sympathy 
and  partly  because  we  were  afraid,  if  the  serene  current 
of  his  intent  were  broken,  he  might  not  go  on  with  the 
story  at  all.  But  it  was  still  a  task  undertaken  and, 
like  everything  in  his  dutiful  life,  to  be  completed. 

"He  was  glad  to  see  me.  We  had  a  good  deal  to 
talk  about.  All  through  that  call  we  lived  over  old 
times.  It  wasn't  for  several  other  visits  that  we  got 
round  to  the  present  and  the  tavern  and  the  dog. 
For  my  story's  about  the  dog,  gentlemen,  really  about 
the  dog." 

"What  was  his  name?"  the  young  man  pelted  in. 


54  VANISHING  POINTS 

Annerly  answered  him  with  perhaps  a  wilfully  con- 
trasting dignity. 

"Abe.  He'd  named  him  for  the  President.  It  may 
have  been  disrespectful;  if  he'd  done  it  in  his  sober 
minutes  maybe  he'd  have  felt  it  so,  but  the  Colonel 
wasn't  very  often  sober,  and  he  called  the  dog  by  that 
name.  You  know,  gentlemen,  as  soon  as  you  begin 
to  think  about  a  person  or  a  particular  thing,  every- 
thing else  seems  to  bring  you  news  of  'em.  It's  just 
as  if  your  mind  was  out  inquiring  about  'em  all  day 
long.  Well,  I  didn't  ask  any  questions  about  the 
Colonel — of  course  I  didn't — but  it  wasn't  a  week 
before  I  had  a  lot  of  data  about  him.  He  was  an  inter- 
esting figure,  and  folks  talked.  It  seemed,  though 
he'd  fought  for  our  side,  Miss  Sally  was  red-hot  Secesh. 
But  that  hadn't  made  any  material  difference  between 
'em.  They'd  put  their  little  money  together — and  they 
had  little  less  than  nothing  when  all's  said  and  done — 
and  come  up  North,  as  the  ostler  had  told  me,  to  live 
in  the  old  house.  But  I  suppose  they  lived  pretty 
nigh  the  wind — I'm  country-bred,  gentlemen;  the 
old  sayings  cling  to  me — and  the  Colonel  felt  he  had 
to  take  a  little  nip  now  and  then — I  told  you  he'd 
been  pretty  seriously  wounded,  didn't  I?  Well,  besides 
that  he  had  a  troublesome  heart;  and  there  was  no 
proper  society  in  the  place  for  a  man  of  his  calibre. 
So  you  see  he  took  to  drinking  very  naturally,  very 
naturally  indeed,  and  that  just  about  broke  Miss 
Sally's  heart  and  her  pride.  Nobody  ever  told  me  these 
reasons  for  their  tiff.  They  just  told  me  the  Colonel 
went  to  the  tavern  and  got  noisy  drunk  and  then  blind 
drunk.  But  I  was  very  much  attached  to  him,  very 


THE  STORY  OF  ABE  55 

much  indeed,  and  I  gave  a  good  deal  of  time  to  think- 
ing about  it.  And  it  didn't  take  me  long  to  see  it  was 
very  natural,  could  hardly  have  been  helped,  you 
might  say,  with  things  as  they  were.  Miss  Sally  wasn't 
a  gentle  person,  as  some  women  are.  She  didn't  suffer 
and  say  nothing.  She  was  high  as  ninety,  I've  under- 
stood; and  one  day  the  Colonel  just  packed  up  his  trunk 
and  came  over  to  the  tavern  and  took  a  room,  and  they 
hadn't  spoken  since.  He  brought  the  dog  with  him. 
The  dog  had  come  to  them.  He'd  walked  into  town 
one  day  with  a  drunken  tramp,  and  the  tramp  had  got 
full,  if  he  wasn't  before,  and  that  night  broke  through 
the  railing  down  at  the  horse-pond,  and  the  dog  had 
run  back  to  town  for  help  as  rationally  as  a  man  would 
have  done,  and  when  the  tramp  was  fished  out  dead 
the  dog  sat  down  on  his  haunches  and  looked  round, 
they  said — the  Colonel  said;  he  was  there — as  if  he 
was  asking:  'Well,  what  next?  What's  my  next  in- 
carnation going  to  be?'  the  Colonel  said  he  seemed  to 
be  asking — the  Colonel  had  quite  a  clever  habit  of 
words — and  when  the  crowd  dispersed  and  the  body 
was  carried  off,  the  dog  just  got  up  and  trotted  after 
the  Colonel.  He'd  picked  him  out,  and  he  trotted 
home  with  him.  That  tickled  the  Colonel,  flattered 
him  maybe.  It  would  flatter  any  of  us — but  it  seemed 
to  him  a  kind  of  human  thing  to  do.  So  he  told  Miss 
Sally  that  the  dog  was  going  to  live  with  them  and 
he  wouldn't  take  a  hundred  dollars  for  him.  And 
when  he  and  Miss  Sally  had  their  flare-up  and  he  left, 
there  was  no  question  but  the  dog  must  go  with  him. 
Well,  sirs,  that  dog  was  a  queer  dog.  Everybody  saw 
it.  I  believe  the  other  dogs  saw  it,  too,  for  they  never 


56  VANISHING  POINTS 

seemed  to  cock  an  ear  at  him  even,  when  he  went  by. 
I  don't  believe  they  were  afraid  of  him.  He  was  as 
goodnatured  a  creature  as  ever  lived;  but  he  always 
seemed  to  be  on  business  of  his  own — trot,  trot,  head 
up,  nose  alive,  eyes  bright  and  a  little  anxious.  Yes, 
he  had  business,  and  it  wasn't  long  before  I  found  out 
what  it  was.  I'm  particularly  fond  of  dogs,  but  I 
never've  had  one  of  late  years,  never  been  stationary 
enough,  and  I  should  be  sorry  to  leave  a  dog — "  the 
other  look  came  into  his  eyes,  the  one  that  must  have 
meant  long  journeyings  to  those  he  called  his  folks,  at 
the  end.  He  recalled  himself,  but  not  until  he  had 
bent  and  given  Mac  a  little  touch  on  the  ear.  The  dog 
knew  what  it  was — not  a  fly,  but  a  friend,  though  it 
was  so  soft,  and  he  lifted  his  head  a  moment  to  see 
who  knew  him  so  well,  and  then  dropped  it  with  a  bump. 

"Yes,"  said  Annerly,  "he'd  built  up  a  business,  and 
he  had  to  give  his  whole  time  to  it  and  his  whole  mind. 
It  was  taking  care  of  the  Colonel." 

"When  he  was  slewed?"  the  young  man  of  no  diffi- 
dences inquired. 

Annerly  did  not  hear  him.  He  had  sent  his  mind 
back  to  scrutinize  that  map  of  the  long  past,  perhaps 
not  altogether  refreshing  his  memory,  but  because  he 
himself  may  not  have  understood  it  as  well  as  he  could 
wish. 

"The  amount  of  it  was,"  said  he,  "the  dog  was  on  the 
watch.  When  the  Colonel  was  himself,  the  dog  took 
his  naps,  kept  himself  to  himself,  and  actually  seemed 
to  be  saving  up  for  the  next  bout.  And  the  Colonel 
wasn't  a  finger-deep  in  whiskey  before  the  dog  was  on 
to  it,  ears  up,  nose  quivering,  tail  going  whenever  the 


THE  STORY  OF  ABE  57 

Colonel  looked  at  him,  as  if  he  was  beseeching  him  to 
remember  they  were  up  against  it  again,  and  for  the 
Lord's  sake  to  see  if  they  couldn't  look  sharp  and  come 
out  of  it  this  tune  with  a  whole  skin." 

He  was  talking  more  easily  as  he  got  warmed  up  to 
it.  Evidently  the  matter  meant  a  good  deal  to  him,  the 
more,  perhaps,  as  tune  gave  him  perspective. 

"You  see,"  he  continued,  rather  feeling  his  way 
now,  as  if  this  chapter  of  it  hardly  concerned  us,  and 
could  only  be  opened  with  the  utmost  delicacy  of  ma- 
nipulation, "when  the  Colonel  had  had  a  drop  too 
much,  he  was  possessed  to  talk.  And  there's  no  doubt 
talking  to  the  kind  of  people  he  did — ready  to  laugh 
and  slap  their  legs — he  made  himself  ridiculous.  That 
was  the  thing  that  had  been  wormwood  to  Miss  Sally — 
stump  oratory,  you  know,  kind  of  old-fashioned  Amer- 
ican-eagle business.  I'm  told  there's  something  of  the 
sort  in  Biglow  Papers.  I  never  read  them  myself.  I 
like  my  English  spelled  right,  and  pronounced  right, 
when  it  comes  to  that.  Well,  the  dog  seemed  to  hate 
it  as  much  as  Miss  Sally  did,  and  the  queer  part  of  it 
was,  he  knew  what  was  coming.  The  Colonel  would 
get  up,  sometimes  in  the  balcony  off  his  room,  and 
sometimes  on  the  old  tree  stump  in  the  square,  some- 
times on  the  band  stand — anywhere  he  happened  to 
be — and  strike  out  and  ram  down  the  long  words  and 
saw  the  air,  and  the  dog  wouldn't  let  him  get  in  more 
than  two  sentences  deep  before  he'd  break  up  the  meet- 
ing. It's  curious  to  me  now  to  remember  the  ways  he 
took  to  do  it.  Sometimes  he'd  run  at  the  Colonel's 
legs  and  snap — and  a  better-behaved  dog  there  never 
was,  common  days.  Sometimes  he'd  pitch  on  another 


58  VANISHING  POINTS 

dog,  hammer  and  tongs,  and  they'd  roll  over  and  yell, 
and  you  couldn't  see  'em  for  the  dust.  I  got  to  think 
the  other  dog  understood  the  scheme  himself;  for  when 
they'd  distracted  the  Colonel  and  he'd  fallen  on  'em 
with  whatever  came  handy,  the  two  dogs  would  leap 
apart,  and  the  second  one  would  go  about  his  business 
and  leave  the  Colonel's  to  the  thrashing  he  was  sure 
to  get.  Yes,  he  got  it  every  time.  'That  dog  of  mine,' 
the  Colonel  would  say,  'he's  getting  quarrelsome;  he's 
getting  unmanageable.  I'll  break  him  of  it,  or  I'll 
break  every  bone  in  his  body.'  And  you'd  have  thought 
the  dog's  bones  might  have  been  pretty  well  broken, 
he  was  so  cut  and  kicked.  But  he  took  it  all  like — well, 
as  I've  understood  the  English  schoolboy  takes  his 
lickings.  I  won't  say  our  schoolboys,  because  I  under- 
stand they're  not  allowed  to  be  licked.  Great  mistake! 
I  was  mellowed  well  in  my  time,  and  I  was  the  better 
for  it.  But  the  dog  never  ki-yi-ed.  He  never  yelped 
a  syllable.  He'd  stand  there  and  be  hammered  like 
a  moth-eaten  old  yellow  rock  carved  out  like  a  dog, 
and  he'd  look  absent-minded  a  little,  as  if  he  really 
didn't  exactly  know  what  was  going  on  and  certainly 
didn't  want  anybody  else  to.  And  when  it  was  over, 
he'd  give  himself  a  kind  of  a  shake  and  a  frisk  as  if  he 
meant  to  say:  'Splendid,  Colonel.  That  was  just 
splendid.  Think  you  could  do  it  again?'" 

"Well,  what's  your  theory  of  it?"  the  prompt  young 
man  inserted  here.  "Why  was  he  so  mighty  fond  of 
being  biffed?" 

"I  don't  say  that  he  was  fond  of  it,"  the  old  gentle- 
man resumed,  with  dignity.  "I  say  he  intentionally 
appeared  to  be  fond  of  it." 


THE  STORY  OF  ABE  59 

"Oh,  come  now,"  said  the  other.  "You  mean  he 
was  putting  up  a  bluff.  Why,  man  alive,  you're  talkin' 
about  a  four-footed  beast!  You're  talking  about  a  dog. 
You  might  as  well  say  this  dog  here — "  with  his  half- 
smoked  cigarette  he  indicated  Mac,  twitching  in  a 
dream  of  sheep-herding. 

"Yes,"  said  the  old  gentleman,  solemnly  and  stiffly, 
"you  might  say  this  dog  here.  Only  it  didn't  happen 
to  be  this  dog.  It  was  another  one." 

"But  you  don't  mean  to  say  you  imagine  dogs  are 
trotting  round  treeing  psychologic  moments — "  he 
was  rather  a  clever  young  man  with  his  tongue  and  his 
trick  of  remembered  phrases.  We'd  all  thought  so 
until  now  he  interrupted  the  story.  "Well,"  he  per- 
sisted, "how  do  you  account  for  it?" 

"How  do  you  account  for  it? "  inquired  the  old  gentle- 
man, and  his  "it"  seemed  to  embrace  a  large  concep- 
tion of  the  uncharted  world  dogs  live  in,  from  which 
they  emerge  mysteriously  for  their  adventures  and 
their  benevolences  in  the  equally  obscure  domain  of 
man. 

"Read  us  that  paragraph  you  had,"  said  the  young 
man.  He  was  frowning  over  an  effort  to  capture  an 
illusory  possibility. 

Annerly  did  it. 

"  Where'd  you  get  it? "  asked  the  ruthless  one.  "Did 
you  say  you  wrote  it?" 

"I  did,"  said  Annerly.  "It  was  the  beginning  of 
the  account  I  meant  to  write  of  this  dog  and  what  he 
had  to  do  and  what  he  taught  me." 

"Ever  write  it?" 

"No.    I  couldn't  make  it  clear  enough.    I  never' ve 


60  VANISHING  POINTS 

spoken  of  it  to  any  one  until  to-day.  I  suppose  I 
shouldn't  now,  but  he" — here,  by  a  gesture,  he  seemed 
to  include  Mac  in  the  circle — "he  brought  it  up,  and — 
well,  I  felt  rather  more  like  it." 

"But  we  haven't  had  all  the  story,"  said  a  timid- 
spoken  man  whose  flamboyant  wife,  from  a  green  be- 
yond, was  waving  him  to  tea. 

"It's  very  short,"  said  Annerly,  as  if  he'd  rather  get 
it  over.  "It's  soon  told.  One  day  in  the  beginning  of 
September  I  took  a  walk  up  the  mountain  road,  and 
when  I  was  coming  back  into  town  I  met  a  lot  of  chil- 
dren, a  whole  Pied  Piper  crowd  of  'em,  and  though 
I'm  not  specially  given  to  noticing  children  I  did  no- 
tice these,  they  looked  so  pretty.  Then*  hats  were  over 
their  eyes  or  falling  down  their  backs,  and  their  hair 
was  anyhow,  and  their  faces  red,  as  if  they'd  run  a 
race,  and  you  could  see  well  enough  why.  It  was  what 
they  carried.  They  were  weighted  down,  every  one 
of  'em,  with  corn,  sweet  corn,  big  armfuls  of  it,  and  two 
little  girls  between  'em  tugged  a  kettle,  three-quarters 
full  of  water  that  slopped  every  step.  When  I  saw  the 
kettle,  I  called  a  halt  and  asked  'em  to  let  me  carry  it. 
But  they  wouldn't  stop  more  than  a  minute.  They 
distrusted  me,  off  on  some  child's  spree  as  they  were, 
like  a  dog's  sheep-killing,  and  they  were  afraid  I'd  cut 
in  and  spoil  it  somehow.  So  'twas,  'No,  sir,'  and, 
'Thank  you,  sir,'  and  on  they  went.  In  a  minute  or 
two  I  overtook  the  Colonel  and  the  dog,  and  knew  he'd 
met  'em;  but  he  was  too  far  along  to  take  much  account 
of  them,  or  any  other  pretty,  innocent  sight.  I  knew 
where  he'd  been.  There  was  a  one-armed  man  along 
the  road,  and  he  kept  a  choice  brand  of  whiskey  for  the 


THE  STORY  OF  ABE  61 

fellows  that  didn't  like  to  drink  as  much  as  they  wanted 
at  the  hotel.  The  Colonel  was  in  one  of  his  grand 
moods.  First  thing  he  said  was  to  inform  me  he  was 
on  his  way  to  deliver  a  short  account  of  the  battle  of 
Gettysburg,  deliver  it  in  the  square.  Then  I  knew 
what  was  coming.  I  knew  the  dog  would  try  to  quash 
it,  and  the  Colonel  would  cut  into  the  dog,  and  if  I'd 
had  a  cask  or  something,  I'd  have  turned  it  over  the 
dog  and  kept  him  in  it,  breathing  through  the  bung- 
hole,  and  saved  his  hide  that  tune. 

"When  we  got  into  the  square  I  was  a  little  easier. 
There  was  nobody  there  but  a  tin-peddler,  and  he'd 
opened  a  bag  of  hay  for  his  horses  and  sat  up  in  his 
cart  and  leaned  back,  having  a  pipe.  But  for  all  the 
Colonel  knew,  he  was  as  good  as  twenty,  and  the  Colo- 
nel got  up  on  the  band  stand  and  opened  fire  on  him. 
I  guess  the  tin-peddler  thought  he  was  crazed.  He 
took  his  pipe  out  of  his  mouth,  and  left  his  mouth 
open  and  stared  a  spell,  and  then  he  seemed  to  think 
it  wouldn't  strike  that  time,  and  leaned  himself  back 
again  and  went  to  sleep,  mouth  still  open.  I  can  see 
that  picture  to  this  day.  Well,  the  Colonel  kept  on 
spouting,  and  the  dog  sat  still,  grave  as  a  judge;  seemed 
to  think  it  didn't  make  any  particular  difference,  long 
as  there  wasn't  anybody  there  but  a  tin-peddler  and 
me.  It  was  a  pretty  hot  day,  and  I  sat  down  on  the 
steps  of  the  stand  and  took  off  my  hat  and  hoped  the 
Colonel  thought  I  was  listening.  Far  as  I  was  con- 
cerned he  might  as  well  work  off  his  load  that  way 
as  any  other,  long  as  there  was  nobody  to  be  mortified 
but  me,  and  Miss  Sally  was  indoors.  It  was  a  day  full 
of  haze,  over  the  mountain  everywhere,  and  I  smelt 


62  VANISHING  POINTS 

smoke  and  liked  it.  Seemed  as  if  every  man  was 
burning  up  the  rubbish  in  his  own  dooryard,  and  as  if 
the  world  was  going  to  be  the  cleaner  for  it.  In  an- 
other minute  I  might  have  been  as  fast  asleep  as  the 
tin-peddler,  but  the  dog  lifted  his  head  and  gave  a  howl, 
an  awful  howl.  If  you'd  heard  it  at  night  on  a  lonesome 
road  you'd  have  put  for  cover.  It  was  so  awful  some- 
how it  even  stopped  the  Colonel.  And  then  the  dog 
started  to  run,  and  stopped  and  howled  again,  and 
looked  back  at  the  Colonel,  and  gave  that  howl  over 
and  over  and  over,  and  at  last  we  judged,  both  at  the 
same  time,  that  something  had  hurt  him  and  he  was  in 
pain.  The  Colonel  got  down  over  the  steps  as  quick  as 
his  legs  would  let  him,  and  made  for  the  dog,  and  I 
followed  on.  Not  very  fast.  I'm  lame,  gentlemen, 
maybe  you've  observed.  '  Something  stung  him? '  the 
Colonel  called  back  to  me.  'It's  more  than  a  sting/ 
I  said,  and  I  knew  he  knew  so,  too.  Of  course  the  one 
stupid  commonplace  about  a  dog  beside  himself  with 
a  trouble  you  can't  understand  is  that  he's  mad.  I  did 
think  that,  too,  but  only  from  a  kind  of  reflex,  caught 
from  our  dull  habits  of  reason.  Every  time  I  saw  the 
dog's  face  when  he'd  look  round  to  find  out  if  the  Colo- 
nel was  following,  I  knew  it  was  just  earnestness  there. 
He'd  got  something  to  do  and  he  was  taking  the  Colonel 
on  to  help  do  it.  And  suddenly,  in  a  second,  both  of 
us  together,  we  knew.  We  smelled  smoke,  more  and 
more  we  smelt  it,  and  when  we  rounded  the  curve  of 
the  road  we  could  see  French's  old  barn,  chiefly  beams 
and  rafters  and  a  roof  with  shingles  curled  up  like 
lichens,  they  were  so  old — just  a  storage-place  for  a 
good  many  years — and  'twas  afire.  I  don't  know  what 


THE  STORY  OF  ABE  63 

there  was  in  it:  anything  the  wet  would  hurt  and  French 
couldn't  bring  himself  to  throw  away — old  sleighs, 
paint-pots,  rolls  of  matting.  I  went  over  it  once  when 
I  felt  lazy,  for  it  was  all  open  to  the  light.  I  used  to 
like  to  understand  folks  then.  'Twas  in  the  days  be- 
fore I  learned  you  can't  understand  'em.  I  knew  French 
had  the  reputation  of  being  close,  and  I  wanted  to  see 
what  road  it  took.  As  a  young  man  I'd  had  a  good 
deal  of  ambition  to  become  a  writer.  Well,  well!" 
He  dropped  into  blank  musing  for  a  moment  here  and 
then  caught  himself  up. 

"  There  was  one  upper  window  left  in  the  place, 
and  what  do  you  think  was  framed  in  it,  the  smoke 
behind  her?  A  little  girl,  gentlemen,  and  she  was 
stretching  out  her  hands  to  us  and  screaming,  piercing, 
needle  screams.  I  never  heard  anything  like  those 
screams.  The  Colonel  started  to  run.  He'd  forgotten 
the  dog,  as  well  he  might,  for  the  minute  the  dog  saw 
he'd  got  us  far  enough  so  we  knew  what  we'd  come 
for,  he  stopped  howling  and  loped  on  ahead.  The 
Colonel  was  a  good  second.  You  wouldn't  know  he'd 
a  glass  of  liquor  to  carry.  He  ran  like  a  boy.  And  we 
got  nearer,  and  the  heat  of  the  fire  struck  us  in  the  face, 
and  the  smoke  came  to  meet  us  and  choke  our  running. 
'There's  an  old  stairway,'  I  called  to  the  Colonel.  He 
was  getting  there  first.  I  knew  he'd  have  to.  'I've 
seen  it;'  and  he  didn't  answer  me,  but  he  pelted  on, 
and  when  I  got  to  the  runway  and  saw  nothing  but 
smoke  and  fire  inside,  he'd  disappeared.  I  thought  the 
dog  had  too,  but,  by  George!  he  hadn't.  He  flew  back 
at  me  out  of  the  smoke  and  bit  at  my  trousers  and 
worried  'em  a  second;  and  you  may  call  me  crazy  if 


64  VANISHING  POINTS 

you  like,  but  I  knew  why.  He  saw  there  was  a  big 
deed  doing  in  there,  and  he  meant  the  Colonel  to  be 
the  one  to  do  it." 

"Oh,  come  now — "  the  young  man  pushed  in,  but 
we  couldn't  stop  to  hear  him.  The  quiet  man  brought 
a  hand  down  on  his  shoulder,  and  he  stopped. 

"Then,"  said  Annerly,  "the  dog  left  me  as  quick 
as  he  had  come,  as  if  he  hoped  he'd  given  me  a  good 
broad  hint  but  hadn't  time  to  stop  to  see,  other  things 
were  so  pressing,  and  he,  too,  scurried  into  the  smoke 
where  the  Colonel  had  gone.  I  was  just  setting  my 
foot  on  the  runway  to  go  in,  when  I  heard  a  voice 
above.  It  was  the  Colonel's.  There'd  been  noise 
enough  before,  with  the  crackling  of  the  fire  and  the 
crying  of  children,  but  the  children  seemed  to  have 
stopped.  The  Colonel  had  done  that.  He'd  got  up 
there  among  'em,  and  they  were  sobbing  a  little,  I 
suppose,  somehow,  as  you  do  when  help  comes  and 
you  know,  tough  as  things  look,  they  can't  be  quite 
so  bad  now.  But  he  was  yelling  at  me,  ordering  me 
to  look  up,  and  I  never  hesitated  any  more  than  I 
should  if  I'd  been  in  the  ranks.  I  ran  round  to  the  side, 
and  there  he  was  at  the  one  window,  and  the  fire  was 
behind  him  and  beside  him,  and  the  smoke  was  thick 
and  gray,  bright-colored,  too,  here  and  there  from  the 
paint.  But  it  blew  away  from  him,  so  I  could  see  every- 
thing for  ten  feet  or  so  back.  I  don't  know  how  to  tell 
it,  gentlemen.  I  haven't  the  words.  I  used  to  try 
to  think  how  I'd  write  it  if  I  was  on  a  paper  and  had 
got  to,  but  I  couldn't  think,  and  I  can't  think  now. 
You  see,  the  side  of  the  barn  was  mostly  gone.  There 
was  just  the  flooring  of  the  mow,  and  up  there  was  the 


THE  STORY  OF  ABE  65 

old  stove  the  children  had  tried  to  light.  And  besides 
the  window  there  were  a  dozen  vertical  gaps  to  right 
and  left  of  it,  where  boards  were  gone,  and  through  them 
I  could  see  what  went  on. 

"'Here,'  said  the  Colonel.  'Here!'  He  lifted  up 
a  little  girl  by  her  shoulders  and  swung  her  out  of  the 
window.  '  Catch  I'  said  he,  and  I  screamed  out  as  the 
children  were  screaming,  as  a  woman  might.  'I  can't/ 
I  said.  'My  God,  I  can't.'  But  in  a  second  I  knew  he 
wasn't  drunk  any  longer,  and  it  was  sober  sense  working 
in  him,  and  that  was  the  only  way.  And  as  I  said 
I  couldn't,  I  held  up  my  arms,  and  he  gave  her  another 
swing  and  let  her  go,  and  she  dropped,  screaming.  But 
I  got  her,  and  got  her  safe  and  right  side  up,  and  the 
minute  I  had  my  hands  on  her  tight  little  body  I 
smelt  my  courage  and  I  knew  I  could  do  it  again.  And 
I  set  her  on  the  ground,  and  I  had  time  to  see,  before 
I  looked  up  for  another,  that  she  wasn't  crying  any 
more,  and,  if  you  will  believe  me,  she'd  put  up  her  hands 
and  was  braiding  her  little  yellow  pigtail.  Yes,  I 
looked  up,  but  the  Colonel  wasn't  ready  for  me.  He 
was  in  trouble  up  there.  The  children  had  got  into  a 
panic  when  they  saw  one  thrown  out;  they  were  more 
afraid  of  being  thrown  than  they  were  of  the  fire,  and 
same  time  they'd  got  a  sudden  idea  of  the  safety  outside, 
and  they  were  crowding  forward  to  the  cracks,  and 
I  knew  they  meant  to  jump.  The  Colonel  was  roaring 
at  'em  as  if  they  were  a  company  in  the  thick  of  battle; 
but  they  couldn't  mind,  they  couldn't  even  hear. 
That's  where  the  dog  came  in.  Suddenly,  as  sudden 
as  the  thought  must  have  sprung  up  in  his  mind,  he 
leaped  at  'em  and  began  to  herd  'em  as  if  they  were 


66  VANISHING  POINTS 

sheep.  The  Colonel  saw  what  he  was  at,  and  yelled  at 
him  and  told  him  to  go  ahead  and  blessed  him  and 
swore  like  a  pirate,  and  the  children  got  more  scared 
of  the  dog  than  they'd  been  of  the  leap,  and  he  ran 
back  and  forth  before  'em,  and  if  one  made  a  dash 
he  was  too  quick  for  her  and  sprung  at  her  clothes  and 
tore  at  'em,  and  she  was  mighty  glad  to  slink  away. 
So  there  they  were  corralled,  the  dog  in  front  and  the 
fire  behind — and  the  fire  wasn't  idle,  mind  you — and 
the  Colonel  snatched  another  and  I  caught  her,  and 
another;  and  I'm  blest  if  he  didn't  get  the  whole 
thirteen  down  safe,  all  but  little  Annie  Dill,  and  she 
only  broke  her  ankle,  and  she's  a  spry,  sound  woman 
to-day,  and  walks  as  well  as  any  of  you.  And  when 
the  last  one  was  crying  in  mother's  apron — for  by  now 
the  whole  village  was  turning  out — there  was  the 
Colonel,  straight  and  tall  like  a  Bible  prophet,  and 
the  fire  was  behind  him,  and  he'd  no  place  to  go  unless 
he  jumped  the  same  way.  I  saw  two  men  running 
with  a  long  ladder,  and  an  old  woman  that  was  grand- 
mother to  one  of  the  children  kept  screaming:  'Why 
don't  you  get  a  feather  bed?  Why  don't  you  get  a 
feather  bed,  so's  that  dear  man  can  jump? '  And  there 
was  a  little  puff  toward  us,  and  the  wind  had  changed, 
and  the  ladder  hadn't  come,  and  the  Colonel  was  in 
the  midst  of  the  fire  and  smoke.  And  so  he  leaped — 
for  there  was  no  other  way — and  the  dog  leaped  after 
him.  He  fell  straight  forward  on  his  face,  the  Colonel 
did,  but  we  had  him  up  in  a  second,  and  there  he  stood, 
pretty  dazed,  pretty  well  scorched;  and  the  first  thing  he 
said  was,  'All  there?'  He  meant  the  children.  'All 
there,  sir/  said  I,  but  I  don't  know  as  he  heard  me, 


THE  STORY  OF  ABE  67 

for  Miss  Sally  came  walking  through  the  crowd — 
I  suppose  she  was  too  dignified  for  anything  but  a 
walk,  but  she  came  so  fast  she  might  as  well  have  run — 
and  she  put  her  two  hands  on  the  Colonel's  shoulders, 
and  she  said  as  well  as  she  could  for  crying,  '  Brother, 
I'm  proud  of  you.'  The  Colonel  was  a  very  courtly 
man.  He  took  one  of  her  hands  down  from  his  shoulder 
and  kissed  it  and  said  to  her,  'Why,  Sally,  old  girl, 
that's  nothing.'  But  as  he  said  it  he  clapped  his  hand 
and  hers  in  it  to  his  side,  and  we  caught  him  and  laid 
him  down,  and  every  one  of  us  knew  he  never 'd  get 
up  again.  And  he  never  did.  He  never  even  opened 
his  eyes.  And  we  carried  him  to  Miss  Sally's  house, 
and  the  mothers  and  fathers  and  children  followed 
after.  But  the  dog  trotted  along  by  Miss  Sally,  head 
down,  tail  dropped,  and  if  we  could  have  known  what 
he  was  thinking  we  should  be  wiser  men  to-day." 

"Now  I  gather,"  said  the  omnivorous  young  man, 
"that  you  not  only  believe  the  dog  scented  out  the 
danger  the  children  were  in,  but  you  think  he  led  the 
Colonel  to  save  'em — "  Then  he  hesitated  a  moment, 
as  if  he  knew  the  pregnant  fact  was  farther  yet  behind. 

"Yes,  sir,"  Annerly  said,  with  almost  a  snap  of  his 
decisive  jaws,  as  if  he'd  have  no  questioning  of  such 
matters,  "I  do." 

"I  understand,  too,  I  gather,"  said  the  young  man, 
frowning  over  the  travail  of  his  own  cleverness,  "you 
think  the  dog  wanted  the  Colonel  to — to  retrieve  his 
shortcomings,  as  it  were,  by  that  kind  of  a  deed." 

"I  think  so,  sir,"  said  Annerly,  as  if  defying  him  to 
challenge  it.  "I  think  I  may  say,  after  all  the  years 
I  have  given  to  reasoning  it  out,  that  I  know  so.  That's 


68  VANISHING  POINTS 

why,  as  I  told  you,  the  dog  didn't  propose  I  should 
have  part  nor  lot  in  it.  He  meant  it  to  be  the  Colonel's 
stunt,  as  it  was.  That  dog  had  as  clear  an  idea  as  I 
had  of  old  Virginia  and  her  pride.  He  meant  to  set 
her  flags  waving,  and  he  did." 

"What  became  of  the  dog?"  hesitated  the  quiet 
man,  rising.  His  wife  had  gone  to  the  length  of  sending 
him  a  pencilled  line  by  a  boy. 

"He  lived  with  Miss  Sally.  They  grew  old  together. 
And  when  Miss  Sally  died,  he  lived  with  me,  and  I 
buried  him  with  my  own  hands." 

Annerly  rose  now,  and  the  rest  of  us,  as  if  by  an 
instinctive  deference,  got  up  with  him.  The  young 
man  did  not  find  his  intellectual  curiosity  sated. 

"But  what  do  you  mean,"  he  prosed,  going  back 
to  the  beginning,  "by  saying  there's  something  dogs 
know  and  men  don't?  What  is  it  they  know?  " 

Annerly  stood  for  a  moment  looking  down,  and,  it 
was  apparent,  thinking.  It  was  not  easy  to  see  whether 
he  considered  this  an  incommunicable  secret,  or  whether 
he  was  wondering  if  it  could  even  be  approached  in 
words.  His  face  grew  more  and  more  gentle.  Suddenly 
it  flushed  over  in  a  lovely  smile  and  he  looked  up. 

"It's  this,  gentlemen,"  said  he,  "I  think  it's  this. 
In  some  unexplained  way  dogs  know  that  cruelty 
rendered  unto  them  will  be  paid  by  suffering  rendered 
unto  man.  When  you  hurt  them  they  rush  upon  you 
with  their  divine  forgiveness — at  once,  pellmell,  because 
they  don't  want  the  God  of  all — the  One  that  holds 
punishment  in  His  hand — they  don't  want  Him  to 
know  they're  hurt.  They  want  to  save  us  who  have 
hurt  them.  That's  the  way  I  reason  it," 


A  GUARDED  SHRINE 

CONSTANCE  BURTON,  on  her  way  down  to 
Wilbraham,  leaned  her  head  against  the  car 
window  and  tried  to  clarify  her  problem,  lest, 
on  arriving,  the  solution  should  be  at  once  required  of 
her.  She  was  a  beautiful  woman,  judged  by  the  canons 
fitted  to  human  living.  Her  face  had  an  alluring 
irregularity;  there  were  complex  meanings  in  it,  veiled, 
some  of  them,  by  memories.  Soft,  loose  hair  drooped 
above  her  delicate  brows,  and  her  mouth  had  the  en- 
chanting line  made  by  a  piquant  upper  lip.  She  looked 
like  a  woman  of  instinctive  sympathies  whom  life  had 
steadily  enriched.  She  knew  the  wholesome  meanings 
of  things,  and  she  had  learned  them  through  experience. 
Her  black  clothes  were  plain,  yet  lovely;  but  they  did 
not  seem  to  be  the  conventional  mourning.  There  was 
a  plume  hi  her  soft  hat,  and  her  cloak  was  held  by  a 
silver  clasp.  She  was  but  two  months  widowed,  and  she 
was  going  down  to  see  her  husband 's  mother,  a  stranger 
to  her,  and  tell  her  some  hard  facts.  How  should  the  facts 
be  told?  To  her,  the  wife,  they  brought  only  an  exalted 
loyalty,  an  added  reason  for  living,  in  that  she  had  to 
complete  something  her  husband  had  begun.  She  sat 
there,  not  letting  her  mind  wander,  but  driving  it  relent- 
lessly back  over  the  six  years  of  her  married  life,  culling 
thence  the  portions  that  would  fit  that  life  as  she  under- 
stood it,  and  as  his  mother  must  be  made  to  understand. 


70  VANISHING  POINTS 

She  had  met  Blaise  Burton  in  Italy  when  he  was 
studying  there,  and  they  had  married  after  a  three 
months'  courtship.  Then  came  his  illness  and  the 
break  that  sent  him  to  Davos,  and  the  long  imprison- 
ment there  with  her  at  hand,  never  farther  away  than 
his  voice  could  reach.  They  had  been  entirely  happy 
in  their  snowy  exile,  he  with  but  one  regret:  that  his 
mother  should  be  living  out  her  days  untended  in 
New  England.  But  in  every  letter  Madam  Burton 
begged  him  not  to  come.  She  would  go  to  him,  she 
promised,  as  soon  as  she  was  free.  Now  she  had  her 
freedom,  after  the  death  of  her  sister,  whose  illness 
matched  his  own;  but  at  that  very  time  had  come  his 
high-hearted  rush  to  the  valley,  to  be  with  his  old  chum 
stricken  by  fever,  his  illness  there  and  death. 

What  could  his  wife  say  to  illuminate  those  obituary 
notices  that  must  have  torn  his  mother's  heart  anew, 
adding  the  pang  of  failure  to  that  of  grief?  She  re- 
membered one  of  the  summaries  from  a  paper  that  had 
been  swift  to  hail  him  when  he  went  into  print  ten 
years  before.  It  was  a  type  of  all  the  rest.  Blaise  Bur- 
ton was,  it  said,  a  one-book  man.  His  earliest  attempt, 
the  Italian  sketches,  fine  spun  as  gossamer,  made  his 
sole  title  to  remembrance.  The  work  that  followed 
later  was  a  futile  incursion  into  fields  where  giants  only 
are  strong  enough  to  tread.  He  had  made  an  unwise 
choice.  He  had  belied  the  promise  of  his  early  days. 

That  concurrent  testimony  roused  her  to  hot  loyalty. 
She  knew  the  dreams  and  longings  out  of  which  that 
work  was  born.  She  had  met,  hand  in  hand  with  him, 
the  visions  that  stirred  him  to  his  rapt  interest  in  the 
soul  of  things,  his  passion  to  depict  it  justly.  While  he 


A  GUARDED  SHRINE  71 

lived,  they  walked,  they  two,  amid  the  shows  of  life, 
oblivious  of  them,  their  eyes  upon  the  dawn.  They 
had  forgotten,  in  their  devotion  to  what  shall  be,  their 
lack  of  recognition  from  the  things  that  are.  But  to 
his  mother  in  her  New  England  solitude,  he  must 
have  been  a  man  of  fame;  or  rather,  he  had  been,  until 
these  chilling  estimates  enlightened  her.  How  could 
she  be  made  to  understand  how  his  life  transcended  all 
he  seemed  to  do,  and  that  his  rush  toward  light  blew 
back  the  flame  he  carried?  How  was  it  possible  to 
show  her  on  what  solid  ground  his  name  might  yet  be  set? 

Constance  descended  at  the  station  hi  the  light  of 
the  later  afternoon.  Wilbraham,  a  college  town,  had 
a  curious  blending  of  life  in  its  elm-shaded  streets. 
There  was  the  quiet  of  an  ancient  spot  where  tradition 
had  been  transmitted  unchanged  from  generation  to 
generation,  and  flickering  about  it,  like  sunlight  on 
still  water,  the  life  of  youth.  Ample  houses  slept  there 
in  colonial  calm,  and  boys  went  trotting  past  them, 
eyes  set  forward  and  hands  clenched.  There  was  a 
placid  river  between  two  lines  of  trees,  and  bare-armed 
athletes  strained  upon  it,  to  the  beat  of  oars. 

Constance  took  one  glance  at  the  wide  horizon 
before  she  found  herself  invited  by  a  bony,  white- 
haired  woman  leaning  from  a  chaise. 

"I  won't  leave  the  hoss,"  the  woman  called.  " Should 
you  just  as  soon  hand  your  check  to  Timothy  Peters? 
Timothy,  you  take  this  check,  an'  bring  her  trunk 
along  next  time  you  come." 

Timothy,  a  lank  denizen,  accepted  the  check,  and 
eyed  the  traveller  with  an  air  of  just  appraisement. 
Constance  knew  at  once  that  she  was  "Blaise's  widder" 


72  VANISHING  POINTS 

to  the  village.  Blaise  had  told  her  all  its  little  annals, 
how  they  were  sown  and  garnered. 

"You  git  right  in  here,"  said  the  woman,  and  when 
Constance  complied,  old  White  rocked  sleepily  away. 

"You  must  be  Mary  King,"  said  Constance. 

"How'd  you  know?"  asked  Mary,  in  quick  delight. 
"I  guess  he  must  ha'  told  ye." 

"  Yes,  he  told  me.  He  told  me  about  making  candy 
in  the  kitchen." 

"Way  over  there  in  Europe,  he  told  you  that?" 

"Yes;  and  how  you  hid  him  under  the  eight-legged 
table  when  he  didn't  want  to  go  to  school." 

Mary  chuckled  in  proud  retrospect.  Then  her  face 
clouded.  "We  had  high  times,"  she  said,  "high  times 
in  them  days." 

They  loitered  along  the  High  Street,  with  its  spacious 
houses,  none  better  than  another,  and  turned  in  at  the 
driveway  of  one  great  place.  Constance  leaned  far 
out  of  the  carriage  to  look.  It  seemed  as  if  he  might 
be  by  to  welcome  her,  so  often  had  they  taken  this 
journey  hand  in  hand  and  rejoiced  at  their  home- 
coming. 

"There's  the  big  lilac,"  she  said  to  herself. 

But  Mary  heard,  and  her  old  eyes  were  dimmed. 

"And  the  horse-block  and  the  mulberry-tree,"  said 
Constance.  "I  believe  that's  the  path  to  the  goose- 
berry patch  and  the  old  well." 

"There's  Mis'  Burton  on  the  door-step,"  said  Mary, 
and  dropped  the  reins.  Old  John  was  coming  from  the 
stable,  his  thin  face  keen  with  interest.  Constance 
smiled  her  recognition  at  him,  and  immediately  there 
were  tears  in  his  eyes,  too. 


A  GUARDED  SHRINE  73 

Madam  Burton  stood  there  on  the  steps,  framed  by 
the  honeysuckle  trellis.  She  was  a  stately  woman, 
with  the  beauty  born  of  a  large-featured  significance 
veiled  by  the  placidity  of  age.  She  made  no  pretence 
at  dressing  in  a  modern  way.  Her  black  silk  was  even 
severe  in  its  plain  waist  and  the  fall  of  the  gathered 
skirt.  She  wore  a  lawn  kerchief  and  a  cap.  Constance, 
seeing  Blaise's  look  in  her,  was  shaken.  Tears  were 
rare  visitants  with  her,  but  when  she  stepped  to  the 
door-stone  where  the  old  lady  was  awaiting  her,  they 
were  running  down  her  cheeks.  The  mother  took  her 
hands  and  seemed  to  steady  her. 

" There,  dear,  there!"  she  said.    "Come  right  in." 

Constance  followed  her.  The  moment  was  poignant 
and  yet  comforting.  There  was  pain  in  it,  and  a  homely 
pleasure  she  had  not  felt  since  Blaise  had  died.  Every 
corner  of  the  house,  as  it  saluted  her,  brought  its  pang 
of  welcome.  It  had  stood  unchanged  since  he  saw  it, 
and  now  she  almost  heard  his  laugh  and  touched  the 
bitter  memory  of  his  talk  about  it.  She  was  comforted 
in  that  she  seemed  about  to  come  upon  him,  and  yet 
smitten  by  a  keen,  new  heat  of  pain  because,  amid 
so  many  voices,  his  was  still. 

She  sank  on  the  sofa  in  the  great  living  room,  and 
drew  Madam  Burton  down  beside  her.  There  they 
sat  for  a  moment  with  clasped  hands,  the  mother 
recognizing  the  tension  of  this  homecoming,  and 
visibly  soothing  her  through  an  attitude  of  mind.  Con- 
stance caught  her  breath  once  or  twice,  and  then  con- 
trolled herself. 

"No,  Mary,  I'll  take  her  up  myself,"  said  Madam 
Burton,  when  Mary  King  appeared  expectantly. 


74  VANISHING  POINTS 

Constance  rose  with  her,  and  they  went  slowly  up 
the  stairs. 

"This  is  his  room,"  said  Madam  Burton,  pausing 
at  the  east-chamber  door.  There  was  no  question 
whether  Constance  was  to  occupy  it,  though  no  small 
adornments  had  been  added  to  fit  her  needs.  She 
stepped  in,  and  Madam  Burton  followed  her.  Con- 
stance looked  about  in  a  recognition  of  it  as  a  part  of 
him,  and  the  older  woman's  mind  seemed  to  accompany 
hers,  gently  and  with  an  unspoken  but  always  reassuring 
commentary.  There  were  his  boyish  trophies  on  the 
wall,  the  hunting-crop,  snow-shoes,  the  photographs 
of  his  mates,  and  the  big  portrait  of  the  dog  that  died. 

" Supper  will  be  at  six,"  said  Madam  Burton,  "but 
there's  no  hurry,  if  you'd  rather  lie  down  a  while." 

Then  she  went  away,  closing  the  door  behind  her, 
and  leaving  Constance,  as  the  wife  subtly  felt,  alone 
with  a  most  dear  possession:  the  boy  whom  she  had 
never  known,  save  through  his  own  careless  testimony. 
But  she  avoided  any  impulsive  survey  of  the  room,  lest 
she  should  exhaust  her  legacy  too  quickly,  and  in  half 
an  hour  she  was  down-stairs  again,  telling  Madam 
Burton  about  her  voyage.  Then  there  was  supper, 
exquisitely  served  in  a  quiet  room  where  the  light 
struck  through  the  grape-vine  trellis,  and  a  little  later 
Constance  found  herself  sitting  on  the  veranda  with 
Madame  Burton,  conscious  that  the  moment  had  come 
for  them  to  talk,  and,  most  probably,  for  her  own 
justification  of  the  dead  against  the  tongues  of  men. 

The  place,  growing  old  in  an  honored  security,  had  a 
peacefulness  as  mellow  as  the  foreign  lands  she  knew. 
The  sounds  of  temperate  life  were  sweet  to  her.  She 


A  GUARDED  SHRINE  75 

heard  the  subdued  clink  of  Mary's  dishes  from  the 
kitchen,  and  the  intermittent  murmur  of  her  voice 
talking  to  the  other  maid.  John  was  pottering  about 
the  stable,  going  back  and  forth  with  a  pail,  and,  she 
noticed,  with  a  responsive  liking,  taking  wistful  glances 
at  her  now  and  then,  as  something  most  immediate 
to  the  house.  Indeed,  the  place,  even  after  his  years 
of  absence,  seemed  haunted  by  the  young  master  still. 

"I  must  take  you  into  the  attic  to-morrow,"  said 
Madam  Burton,  suddenly.  She  had  thrown  a  white 
shawl  about  her  shoulders,  and  now  she  drew  the  corner 
up  over  her  head.  So  draped,  she  was  majestic  in  a 
gentle  way,  and  Constance,  turning  to  answer  her, 
felt  the  wonder  awakened  by  old  age  that  sees  its  road 
and  yearns  not  backward. 

"I  want  to  go  everywhere,"  she  answered. 

"  All  his  little  things  are  there,"  said  Madam  Burton. 
' '  I  began  to  look  them  over  a  week  ago.  Then  I  thought 
I'd  let  them  be  till  you  came,  and  we'd  do  it  together." 

" His  baby  things?" 

"Yes;  and  some  he  wore  when  he  was  a  boy.  He 
had  a  braided  jacket — " 

"I  know.  That  was  the  time  the  other  boys  called 
him  Mary  Ann,  and  he  came  home  and  chopped  his 
curls  off." 

Madam  Burton  laughed.  "Yes,"  said  she,  "that  was 
the  time.  I  never  shall  forget  his  poor  little  freckled 
face,  all  over  tears.  He  took  the  kitchen  knife  and 
made  a  slash  across  the  braid.  I  have  always  kept  the 
jacket.  He  felt  so  bad.  I  felt  bad,  too." 

"But  you  took  him  up  to  town  next  morning," 
said  Constance,  justifyingly,  "and  had  his  hair  shingled, 


76  VANISHING  POINTS 

and  brought  him  a  real  boy's  suit  with  trouser  pock- 
ets." 

The  erring  mother  smiled.  "Yes,  I  did/'  said  she. 
"I  made  up  as  soon  as  I  could." 

"What  else  is  in  the  attic?"  asked  Constance,  softly. 

"A  good  many  of  his  clothes,  dear.  I  never  could 
seem  to  throw  away  his  clothes  till  he  grew  so  big  they 
looked  like  other  folk's.  He  had  a  little  raglan.  You 
don't  know  what  a  raglan  was?  They  were  old-fashioned 
even  then." 

"  A  kind  of  outside  garment,  wasn't  it?  " 

"Yes;  a  queer  little  coat.  This  was  checked,  with 
lots  of  buttons.  That  was  when  he  was  a  mite  of  a  thing. 
And  one  day  we  walked — it's  a  mile  beyond  here — 
to  the  place  where  old  Silas  Edes  took  daguerreotypes. 
Silas  never  believed  in  newfangled  things.  If  you 
mentioned  photographs  to  him,  he'd  swear  most 
distressingly." 

"So  you  walked  there — " 

"Yes,  my  dear.  Blaise  had  his  picture  taken  in 
his  raglan,  and  he  was  so  proud  you  can't  think.  When 
we  came  away,  nothing  would  do  but  he  must  carry 
it.  So  I  let  him;  but  it  fell  out  of  the  little  pocket, 
and  we  had  to  go  back  half  the  way  for  it.  He  didn't 
cry  that  time.  His  lips  quivered,  but  he  held  them 
tight." 

Old  John  came  out  of  the  barn  and  advanced  to  the 
veranda  rail.  He  spoke  to  Madam  Burton,  but  he 
looked  at  Constance. 

"Maybe  I'd  better  have  old  Hornblende  up  from 
the  pastur'  to-morrer,"  he  said.  "Maybe  she'd  like 
to  see  him." 


A  GUARDED  SHRINE  77 

"Yes,"  said  Madam  Burton,  "have  him  up." 

"Horse  he  rode  constant,  last  year  he  was  to  home," 
John  explained,  rather  chokingly.  "Horse  seemed  to 
understand  every  word  was  said  to  him.  I'll  have  him 
up." 

Constance  rose  and  leaned  upon  the  rail.  She 
spoke  eagerly. 

"No,"  said  she.  "Let  me  go  down.  I  want  to  see 
the  brook  where  the  spearmint  grows.  I've  got  to 
drink  out  of  the  spring." 

John's  face  grew  fuller  with  the  moving  blood. 
"There!"  said  he  to  Madam  Burton,  and  she  nodded 
at  him.  "We'll  go  down  'long  about  ten,"  he  said 
to  Constance,  and  turned  away  toward  the  stable  again, 
shaking  his  head  and  carrying  on  a  commendatory 
dialogue  with  himself. 

At  once  Constance  felt  that  the  young  master's 
house  had  accepted  her.  But  instead  of  settling  down 
into  its  peace,  she  had  still  her  task  to  do,  and  she  broke 
into  it  with  the  haste  sprung  from  enforced  delay. 

"  Have  you  read  what  the  papers  say  of  him? " 
she  asked,  abruptly. 

The  older  woman  inclined  her  head.  "Some  of 
them,"  she  answered.  "Yes,  a  good  many.  You  know 
he  subscribed  to  quite  a  number  of  foreign  ones  for  me." 

Constance  dared  her  plunge.  "They  say  he  failed," 
she  said,  with  a  note  of  bitterness. 

"Yes,"  returned  the  mother,  gently.     "I  know." 

The  young  wife's  mind  supplied  the  counter-question, 
"And  don't  you  care?"  But  she  did  not  put  it.  In- 
stead, she  began  her  prearranged  defence  with  one  of 
the  commonplaces  that  she  had  thought  might  serve. 


78  ^VANISHING  POINTS 

"I  don't  know  whether  you  were  prepared  for 
it?" 

"  My  dear,"  said  the  other  woman,  still  with  that  com- 
pliant dignity,  "when  people  are  as  old  as  I  am,  they 
don't  prepare.  They  take  things  as  they  come."  Then, 
answering  the  baffled  look  on  the  young  wife's  face, 
she  continued,  as  if  she  refrained  from  directing  the 
talk  into  ways  it  was  not  meant  to  take:  "He  worked 
quite  hard  these  last  years?" 

It  was  a  question,  and  Constance  returned  hotly: 
"It  was  not  so  much  work.  It  was  a  fight.  You  know, 
dear — "  She  paused,  and  remembering  she  had  lost 
her  own  mother  too  early  to  make  the  transference  of 
the  word  a  disloyalty,  wondered  if  she  might  adventure 
it. 

"I  wish  you  would,"  said  Madam  Burton. 

Constance  thanked  her  with  a  look.  "I  don't  believe 
you  guessed  how  he  changed,  how  the  whole  bent  of  his 
mind  altered  up  there  in  the  last  years.  His  letters 
didn't  tell  you.  They  were  too  personal.  Don't  you 
know  how  he  used  to  fill  them  with  every-day  gossip, 
— what  we  were  doing,  how  the  latest  patient  behaved, 
and  those  marginal  drawings,  enough  to  make  a  mummy 
laugh?" 

"They  were  good  letters,"  said  the  mother. 

"Yes;  but  you  had  to  find  the  intimate  part  of  him 
in  his  work.  And  his  work  was  scattered,  in  America, 
in  England,  everywhere.  He  besieged  the  journals  with 
poems,  essays;  but  what  he  wrote  was  too  unpopular 
ever  to  be  collected.  So  no  one  can  sit  down  to  turn 
his  pages,  volume  after  volume,  and  say,  'He  was 
this  or  that.'  We  can't  prove  anything  about  him. 


A  GUARDED  SHRINE  79 

They  won't  let  us."  Her  face  kindled  with  heat  en- 
gendered by  her  fighting  spirit. 

"What  do  you  want  to  prove,  my  dear?"  asked 
the  other  woman. 

"I  want  to  prove  that  he  was  not  a  man  of  one  book, 
but  many, — not  judging  by  quantity,  mind  you.  No! 
By  actual  achievement.  Just  think!  This  was  what 
he  did.  He  went  to  Italy  and  wrote  those  color  sketches. 
If  he  had  pinned  himself  down  to  that  kind  of  work, 
nobody  would  have  had  enough  of  him.  There  would 
have  been  sets  of  him  in  boxes,  and  people  would  be 
babbling  about  his  style.  But  no !  he  went  up  there  into 
the  mountains  and  began  to  live.  He  dealt  with  nations 
then,  not  individuals.  It  was  England's  Eastern 
policy  that  inflamed  him  first;  he  poured  his  blood 
into  those  sonnets.  He  saw  America  forswearing  her 
old  aloofness,  and  pitched  in.  More  sonnets,  and  the 
essays  called  'The  Lost  Atlantis'.  Well,  they  hated 
him.  The  people  that  spoke  his  own  tongue  abjured 
him.  It  was  a  literary  ostracism.  England  was  too  hot 
with  the  heat  of  battle  to  hear  reproof  without  calling 
it  traitorous  in  any  man  of  English  speech.  America 
was  too  fat  with  money  and  crude,  hurtling  power — " 

She  choked,  and  thoughts  came  faster  than  her 
words.  This  was  as  she  had  imagined  herself  speaking 
before  audiences  that  were  willing  to  see  him  rehabili- 
tated. But  great  as  was  the  tide  within  her,  it  found 
itself  stilled  by  the  extreme  quiet  of  his  mother,  whom 
she  had  meant  to  comfort.  It  seemed  at  the  moment 
as  if  the  other  woman  had  not  felt  the  popular  dumbness 
as  she  had  done.  It  might  even  be  that  she  had  not 
felt  it  at  all.  But  she  was  speaking: 


80  VANISHING  POINTS 

"He  had  a  following,  I  think?" 

"Oh  yes,  he  had  a  following  of  the  malcontents 
that  are  always  on  the  other  side.  They  liked  to  call 
him  'one  of  us'.  But  don't  you  see,  mother,  his  own 
people,  the  men  of  letters,  they  didn't  take  the  trouble 
to  find  out  what  he  was  doing.  They  sat  down  and 
bemoaned  those  little  cameos  because  there  weren't 
more  of  them.  They  wouldn't  take  the  trouble  to 
understand  him.  They  clogged  his  way  with  their 
numbing  silence,  their  foolish  laughter — ." 

"You  feel  this  very  keenly,"  said  Madam  Burton. 

This  time  Constance  dared  her  question:  "Don't 
you  feel  it?" 

But  Madam  Burton  hardly  seemed  to  hear. 

"You  think,"  she  pursued,  "he  was  unpopular  be- 
cause he  spoke  the  truth?" 

"Because  he  spoke  the  honest  truth,  as  he  saw  it 
hour  by  hour.  He  wasn't  always  right.  No!  But  his 
intention  was  colossal.  He  should  have  been  judged  by 
that.  But  they  didn't  want  to  be  flagellated  and 
scorched  and  scarred.  They  wanted  little  pocket 
volumes  they  could  read  on  the  train.  People  are 
shy  of  big  intentions.  They  don't  tolerate  them, 
except  in  the  standard  classics." 

Madam  Burton  had  another  question  to  put,  and 
she  essayed  it  apprehensively.  "Did  he — "  she  hesi- 
tated. "Do  you  think  he  felt  this  deeply?  " 

"Not  for  a  moment.  He  was  too  big.  He  was 
only — what  shall  I  say? — a  little  wistful  over  it.  Once 
he  did  say:  'They  mustn't  make  me  self-conscious. 
They  mustn't  weaken  my  sword-arm.'  No!  he  was 
above  the  clouds.  But  I — I  wasn't,  though  it's  only 


A  GUARDED  SHRINE  81 

since  he — since  it  happened,  that  I've  grown  so  hot 
about  it.  You  see,  up  there  with  him,  it  didn't  seem 
to  matter.  Besides,  I'd  always  had  a  hope  they  would 
recognize  him  at  last.  When  the  notices  came  out, 
I  turned  to  them  for  the  only  comfort  life  could  give 
me.  But  I  didn't  get  it.  He  was  a  man  who  had  at 
one  tune  shown  promise.  That  was  what  they 
said." 

Madam  Burton  rose  and  drew  her  shawl  about  her. 
"Let  us  take  a  step  in  the  garden/'  she  suggested,  and 
Constance  followed  her.  They  went  down  the  path 
to  the  long,  sweet-smelling  enclosure,  and  paced  gravely 
between  borders  rich  with  flowers,  the  mother  leaning 
on  her  daughter's  arm.  Down  by  the  gnarled  apple- 
tree  at  the  foot  Madam  Burton  stopped  and  pointed 
out  a  patch  of  ladies'-delights  in  the  enfolding  sward. 
"That's  Timmie's  grave,"  she  said. 

"The  spaniel?" 

"Yes.  Blaise  buried  him  himself,  and  then  stole 
into  the  house  and  asked  me  to  come  and  sing  { Sister, 
thou  wast  mild  and  lovely.'  I  did  it.  He  piped  up  too, 
with  his  little,  clear  voice.  We  never  spoke  of  it  after- 
wards, even  when  he  was  grown  up.  It  had  gone  too 
deep." 

They  turned  back  again,  and  then  Madam  Burton 
suddenly  continued,  with  a  bright  rallying  of  spirit 
that  illumined  her:  "Well,  daughter,  what  are  we 
going  to  do  about  it?" 

"About  him?    His  memory?" 

"Yes." 

"There  is  but  one  thing  for  me  to  do.  Write  his 
life,  collect  his  papers,  publish  them  at  my  own  expense. 


82  VANISHING  POINTS 

Say  to  the  world,  'This  was  the  man  you  shut  your 
ears  to.' " 

"  Would  he  want  you  to?" 

Constance  halted  at  a  spot  where  the  fragrance 
of  honeysuckle  scented  the  air  and  great  red  poppies 
lay  around,  bursting  with  bloom. 

"No,"  she  said,  in  frank  avowal;  "he'd  laugh  at 
me.  He  never  took  back  tracks  in  his  life.  He  never 
reconsidered  what  was  done.  He  only  pressed  on  to 
the  goal  that  was  before  him." 

"Yes,"  said  the  mother,  quietly,  "I  know." 

"But  don't  you  see,  mother,"  the  girl  cried,  with 
an  added  passion,  "what  the  goal  proved  to  be?  An 
unlamented  death,  an  obscure  grave." 

"Not  lamented?" 

At  that  moment  John,  having  finished  his  work, 
came  out  upon  the  back  veranda,  and  Mary  followed 
him.  They  took  chairs  there,  and  sat  in  quiet  talk 
together.  The  two  women  in  the  garden  knew  their 
minds  were  busy  over  this  homecoming  and  the  absent 
master  of  the  house. 

"Yet,"  said  Constance,  after  they  had  exchanged 
a  glance  over- that  pregnant  byplay,  "I  want  to  build 
a  monument  to  him.  You  wrote  me  you  had  put  up  a 
stone  to  him  in  the  churchyard  here.  I  want  this  to  be 
my  stone." 

"Yes,  I  put  up  the  stone;  but  Blaise  doesn't  lie  there. 

No  matter  where  the  real  man  lies.    And  as  for  the  goal 

— "  she  looked  inevitably  up  at  the  sky  where  a  star 

was  shining.     "Well — "  she  said,  and  could  not  finish. 

"You  want  I  should  bring  you  somethin'  thicker 
to  put  on?"  called  Mary  from  the  porch. 


A  GUARDED  SHRINE  83 

Madam  Burton  smiled.  "No,"  said  she, — adding 
to  Constance:  "That  is  Mary's  way  of  ordering  me 
in.  I  do  get  stiff.  It's  a  silly  piece  of  business,  this 
growing  old." 

"Let  us  go  in,"  said  Constance,  with  quick  solicitude. 

"We  might  as  well.  I  want  to  take  you  up  to  my 
room.  There  are  one  or  two  things  there  you'd  like  to  see. 
I'll  go  up  first,  my  dear,  and  get  a  light."  But  while 
Constance  lingered  in  the  hall,  Mary  King  came  through 
the  dining-room  and  beckoned.  Constance  followed 
her  back  to  the  kitchen,  and  there  Mary  took  from  her 
pocket  a  little  worn  card,  and  held  it  solicitously  out 
between  her  thumb  and  finger. 

"I  didn't  want  her  to  see  it,"  she  whispered.  "She 
never  knew  there  was  such  a  thing.  It's  just  as  well 
not." 

Constance  took  the  card  and  bent  over  it  by  the 
light  of  the  candle.  When  she  looked  up,  Mary  King 
nodded  triumphantly  and  smiled. 

"It's  a  reward  of  merit,"  said  she.  "The  first  he 
ever  got." 

Constance  looked  again  at  the  glazed  surface,  where, 
under  a  moss  rosebud,  was  her  husband's  name,  with 
the  date  of  a  long-past  year. 

"He  wa'n't  no  bigger'n  a  pint  o'  cider,"  continued 
Mary  King,  in  swelling  chronicle,  "when  he  come  home 
that  afternoon  with  this  held  out  in  his  hand,  as  budge 
as  you  please.  'Here,  Mary,'  says  he,  'here's  my 
reward  of  merit.  You  can  have  it  if  you  want  to. 
Where's  the  cookies?";  Mary  chuckled.  "'Where's 
the  cookies?'"  she  repeated,  as  if  the  words  were 
golden  gram.  "If  I  hadn't  kep'  over  the  rollin'- 


84  VANISHING  POINTS 

pin  pretty  stiddy,  he'd  ha'  eat  us  out  o'  house  an' 
home." 

"So  he  gave  it  to  you!"  said  Constance.  Her  eyes 
were  wet  and  her  mouth  trembled. 

"Yes.  His  mother  was  in  York  State  makin'  a 
visit,  an'  when  she  come  back  he  never  thought  on't 
again.  But  I  kept  it  nice,  in  among  my  things." 

"Coming,  Constance?  "  Madam  Burton  called. 

"Thank  you,  Mary,"  said  the  girl,  giving  back  the 
card.  "I'm  glad  you  showed  it  to  me." 

Mary  nodded,  and  holding  it  in  one  careful  hand, 
took  her  way  toward  the  kitchen,  while  Constance  ran 
up-stairs. 

Madam  Burton  was  in  the  west  chamber,  where 
there  was  provision  for  all  weathers:  a  great  fireplace 
for  the  cold,  with  chintz-covered  furniture  and  floating 
curtains  to  fit  the  summer.  There  were  a  few  old- 
fashioned  pictures,  a  Landseer,  a  Reynolds,  and  pea- 
cock feathers  drooped  over  the  glass.  The  room 
offered  an  impression  of  unconsidered  furnishing,  as 
if  things  not  wanted  in  the  rest  of  the  house  had  drifted 
there  for  refuge.  Yet  it  had  an  air  of  comfort.  It 
was  a  mother's  room.  There  were  two  lighted  candles 
on  the  dressing-table,  and  Madam  Burton,  standing 
before  them  in  her  graceful  slenderness,  the  shawl 
dropping  from  her  shoulders,  turned  with  an  inviting 
gesture.  Constance  joined  her  there,  and  the  other 
woman  laughed  in  a  sweet  deprecation. 

"It's  so  silly,  dear,"  she  said,  "but  I  came  across 
it  to-day.  It's  a  valentine  he  made  for  me  when  he  was 
only  ten.  He  cut  the  letters  out  of  an  old  label  that 
came  on  some  sort  of  fancy  goods.  See!  ' Mother — 


A  GUARDED  SHRINE  85 

Pure  sole.'  He  couldn't  spell  it  right,  poor  dear. 
The  letters  didn't  run  to  it." 

The  two  women  looked  at  each  other  and  smiled 
with  that  whimsical  mirth  which  is  not  merriment, 
but  love.  The  mother  in  them  was  alive.  At  that 
moment  they  both  felt  in  the  room  the  presence  of  the 
shadowy  third — the  little  boy  grown  up  so  long  ago. 
Then  they  sat  down  together  by  the  table.  Madam 
Burton  began  abruptly: 

"It  isn't  that  I  don't  sympathize  with  what  you 
intend  to  do.  It's  only  that  I  don't  want  you  to  be 
disappointed  if  it  doesn't  come  out  the  way  you  expect." 

"You  think  people  may  not  read  his  papers  if  I  get 
them  together?" 

"They  may  not.  At  least,  not  with  your  eyes.  You 
see,  my  dear,  we  have  to  learn  that  there  are  two  parties 
to  what  we  say — the  one  that  speaks,  the  one  that 
hears.  Well,  Blaise  may  never  have  found  any  one  to 
hear." 

"I  don't  believe  you  care  whether  they  listen  or  not," 
said  Constance,  with  an  illuminating  comprehension. 

Madam  Burton  laid  one  delicate  hand  on  hers. 

"Not  much,  dear,"  she  answered,  lightly.  "Not 
very  much." 

"You  think  he  did  his  work!" 

"I  know  he  did.    We  both  know  it." 

"And  that  is  enough!" 

Madam  Burton  rose  and  put  out  the  candles  with 
a  charming  motion  full  of  her  gentlewoman's  grace. 

"It  seems  a  pity  to  have  a  light,  these  summer 
nights,"  she  said.  "Come  to  the  window.  We  can 
talk  better  there." 


86  VANISHING  POINTS 

They  stepped  up  into  the  recess  made  by  the  curving 
glass,  and  stood  a  moment  before  sitting  down  on  the 
cushioned  seat.  For  Constance  there  was  suddenly 
a  sense  of  richness  and  of  peace.  She  was  here  in  his 
home,  hung  with  countless  memories  of  him  like  a  wall 
curtained  with  pictures.  The  child  was  here,  the  little 
boy  who  had  grown  into  the  man  she  loved.  In  the 
almost  tangible  presence  of  his  memory,  bounded 
achievement  fell  away  from  him  and  left  him  mother- 
naked,  a  creature  of  exquisite  mortality,  on  his  way 
from  world  to  world,  lightly  scorning  to  give  the  victor's 
hail  to  frame.  He  had  become  a  citizen  of  the  universe, 
not  of  one  exacting  spot  where  names  are  writ  in  water 
or  in  brass,  but  still  in  an  imperfect  script  that  may 
or  may  not  fit  the  universal  tongue.  It  was  not  so 
much  that  he  was  reft  from  earth  as  released  from  it, 
and  dowered  with  swifter  wings  for  love  and  worship. 
She  was  warm  at  the  heart  with  the  nearness  of  him. 
Recalled  by  the  passing  of  an  emotion  too  poignant 
to  be  long  continued,  she  glanced  at  his  mother,  who 
stood  there,  hands  clasped  in  front  of  her  and  head 
thrown  back,  her  eyes  upon  a  star. 

"I  wonder,"  said  the  older  woman,  thrillingly — 
"I  wonder  what  he  is  doing  now!"^ 


THE  DISCOVERY 

THE  young  man  and  woman,  both  of  them  jour- 
nalists, met  at  the  station  that  April  morning, 
on  their  way  out  of  town.  The  day  was 
wonderful  even  in  the  city,  all  nebulous  prophecy,  and 
they  two,  though  they  were  going  on  urgent  business, 
had  the  eager  holiday  look  of  those  who  are  called  to 
green  fields.  They  met  with  the  nod  of  casual  friendship 
common  to  workmen  in  kindred  paths,  and  yet  each 
face  brightened  for  an  instant  and  reflected  pleasure 
from  the  other.  An  observer  would  have  called  them 
a  couple  in  the  old,  intimate  sense  of  the  word,  very 
handsome,  full  to  the  brim  of  purpose,  and  with  some 
deed  before  them.  It  was  only  when  they  were  seated 
in  the  car  that  Hallett,  the  young  man,  began  to 
talk. 

"It's  really  a  discovery,  Lucy?  Your  note  wasn't 
explicit." 

"It's  a  discovery.  I  found  it  out  by  the  slightest 
chance,  and  I'm  so  proud.  I  met  Tommy  Atwood. 
He  asked  me  if  it  was  true  that  you  were  doing  a  mono- 
graph on  Cecil  Milner.  I  said  'yes.' ': 

"Tommy  couldn't  even  imagine  doing  it.  He'd 
rather  report  a  fireman's  ball." 

"So  he  implied.  ' Better  a  living  personal  than  a 
dead  author/  he  said.  'Milner,  too,  of  all  the  swells! 
Hallett'll  have  to  read  a  complete  set,  won't  he?' " 

87 


88  VANISHING  POINTS 

"I  suppose  you  didn't  mention  it  was  the  biggest 
thing  that  ever  happened  to  me?" 

"Oh  no!  Tommy  couldn't  take  that  in.  He  hasn't 
room.  But  he  said,  'I  was  in  the  same  town  with 
Milner  once, — little  country  place  where  he  was  spend- 
ing the  summer.'" 

"Road  End!" 

"Yes.  And  then  he  went  on: e Queer,  wasn't  it,  that 
he  should  go  down  there  to  a  house  party  and  elect 
to  stay  in  that  little  cottage  at  the  turn  of  the  lane?" 

"What!  he  didn't  stay  at  the  Taylors'  at  all?" 

"No,  sir!  he  stayed  by  himself  in  a  little  house  in- 
habited by  a  '  widow  lady,'  Tommy  says, — a  widow 
lady  named  Pratt.  Tommy  remembers  the  name  be- 
cause, though  he  had  only  an  hour  or  so  there  that 
summer,  he  tried  to  get  an  interview  with  Milner,  and 
failed." 

Hallett  looked  at  her  in  a  frank  disgust  over  his  own 
density,  and  she  returned  the  glance  from  as  candid  a 
pleasure  at  her  own  chance  for  supplementing  his  wits. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "we  were  stupid,  both  of  us.  But 
how  could  we  think  he  went  down  for  a  house  party  and 
didn't  stay  at  the  house?  How  could  we  dream  that 
when  Mrs.  Taylor  and  everybody  connected  with  that 
summer  seem  to  have  died  or  gone  mad — how  could 
we  dream  there  was  a  widow  lady  named  Pratt  living 
down  there  to  enlighten  us?" 

"You  don't  know  she's  living?" 

"No.  I  haven't  dared  look  that  in  the  face.  She 
must  be  living.  No  All- Wise  Providence  would  flaunt 
such  a  chance  as  this  and  then  say  it's  only  irony." 

Hallett  relapsed  into  astonishment. 


THE  DISCOVERY  89 

"Well,"  he  said,  at  length,  as  the  train  ran  out  into 
the  open  country,  all  a  green  mist  of  leaves,  "nobody 
could  have  thought  it.  Nobody  would  have  thought 
it,"  he  added,  frowningly,  as  if  he  justified  his  own 
laggard  wits.  "Everybody  who  might  reasonably  have 
been  connected  with  that  summer  is  dead — " 

"Except  Felicia  May.  And  she's  married  and  swal- 
lowed up  in  India.  You  couldn't  say  to  her,  anyway: 
*  You  that  were  Felicia  May,  I  gather  that  Cecil  Milner 
was  in  love  with  you.  Kindly  tell  me  what  he  said, 
and  what  broke  it  off,  and  whether  that  hastened  his 
death.'  No;  Tommy  Atwood  could  say  that,  but  not 
you.  There  are  limits." 

Thereafter  until  they  reached  the  sweet-smelling 
little  country  town  they  both  meditated,  each  in  a 
different  key.  Lucy,  who  pursued  every  line  to  a 
finish,  who  from  mere  curiosity  over  life  turned  all 
the  stones  she  saw,  sat  upright,  her  hazel  eyes  dark 
with  the  excitement  of  a  fortunate  issue.  Hallett, 
long,  lank,  with  sallow  cheek,  and  dark  eyes  shrouded 
in  a  melancholy  of  inherited  temperament,  brooded 
on  the  misfortune  of  his  own  nature,  which  always 
led  him  into  meditation  over  the  abstract  to  the  neg- 
lect of  the  obvious.  But  he,  too,  was  aglow,  and  with 
a  warm  gratitude  to  her  because  she  had  again,  as  she 
so  often  did  in  their  fraternal  pursuits,  turned  him 
into  the  channel  of  evident  values.  Thinking  that,  he 
spoke  suddenly  and  with  fervor: 

"Lucy,  you're  a  dear!" 

She  flashed  round  on  him  her  own  look  of  personal 
gratitude.  She  was  like  a  trusty  comrade,  always 
retrieving  for  him  morsels  of  the  practical  advantage 


90  VANISHING  POINTS 

he  was  not  quite  equipped  to  hunt  alone.  But  for  his 
own  talent  she  had  a  vivid  glow  of  admiration.  She 
could  pounce  on  the  incidents  of  Milner's  life.  Hallett 
could  reproduce,  with  clear,  faithful  touches,  the  com- 
plexion of  Milner's  genius,  perhaps  even  his  soul  before 
they  had  done  with  him;  and  by  dint  of  such  wonder- 
fully shaded  paths,  shaded  and  watered  if  she  could 
manage  it,  he  would  one  day  leap  out  of  journalism 
into  a  recognized  success,  and,  before  he  was  fifty,  the 
world  might  find  in  him  another  Milner.  For  a  moment 
she  lost  herself  in  her  dream,  and  then  Road  End  was 
called,  and  they  alighted  at  the  lonely  station,  where 
there  were  sky,  a  horizon  line  amply  removed,  and 
sweet  air  to  breathe.  Mrs.  Pratt  was  living,  though 
they  did  not  put  their  question  in  that  form,  and  not 
so  far  away,  the  station-master  told  them.  Did  they 
see  the  big  house  on  the  hill?  It  was  impossible  to 
ignore  its  audacity,  all  stuccoed  towers.  Well,  Mrs. 
Pratt  lived  about  half  a  mile  farther  along  on  the  little 
cross-road  under  the  knoll.  Then  they  stepped  out 
on  their  quest.  They  had  both  been  born  in  the  coun- 
try, and  the  day  and  the  year  were  young  enough  to 
convey  them  into  the  happy  illusion  that  they  were  on 
their  way  to  school,  dinner  pail  in  hand  and  the  fearful 
gleam  of  examination  day  before  them.  Even  in  their 
kindred  daily  pursuits  they  had  never  felt  so  at  one. 
Perhaps  it  was  Hallett  who  suddenly  came  upon  a 
recognition  of  it,  thrown  back,  with  this  pleasant  little 
jolt,  into  a  simple  life  where  to  love  a  girl  as  he  loved 
Lucy  was  to  act  upon  it.  Lucy  did  not  need  to  recog- 
nize their  bond.  She  had  always  felt  it,  only  it  suited 
her  humble  acceptance  of  him  to  translate  the  one 


THE  DISCOVERY  91 

great  fact  that  held  them  with  a  silent  potency  into 
any  kind  of  service.  He  looked  at  her  from  time  to 
time  in  a  puzzled  way,  as  if  he  were  beginning  to 
realize  her;  but  she  did  not  look  at  him.  Her  mind 
was  practically  on  Cecil  Milner.  At  an  imposing  fool- 
ish gateway  leading  to  a  tree-bordered  avenue^ the 
curve  of  which  denied  the  eye  any  real  vista,  they 
stopped.  This  was  the  avenue  to  Mrs.  Taylor's  great 
house,  where,  though  Cecil  Milner  had  not  stayed,  he 
had  at  least  been  every  day  or  many  times  a  day,  all 
through  that  final  summer.  Hallett  laid  his  hand  on 
the  gate  and  glanced  at  her. 

"We  must  go  in,  I  suppose? "  he  said. 

"Yes."  Her  face,  as  well  as  her  assenting  tone, 
showed  that  this  had  been  one  of  her  purposes  for  him. 
"I  suppose  there  are  invisible  portraits  of  him  now  all 
along  here  where  he  used  to  pass." 

That  gave  Hallett  at  once,  with  his  sensitiveness  to 
suggestion,  a  feeling  that  Milner  was  there  with  them, 
and  lent  the  place  something  solemn  and  austere.  The 
avenue  in  its  ample  sweep,  where  the  lateral  shrubbery 
had  encroached  and  the  tree  tops  had  met  overhead, 
began  to  seem  to  them  both  like  a  jungle  or  an  en- 
chanted wood  where  they  were  penetrating,  breathless, 
to  some  unknown  end.  At  length,  with  a  sharper  curve, 
they  came  out  on  the  house,  remarkable  for  its  pomp 
and  the  amount  of  building  material  put  into  use  with 
a  consistent  wrongheadedness  almost  admirable.  It 
told  one  tale — money,  money  everywhere,  and  the 
personal  bodily  comfort  which  had  fatuously  dared  to 
reign  without  allowing  the  eye  one  glorious  right.  The 
two  young  pilgrims  looked  at  each  other. 


92  VANISHING  POINTS 

"How  could  he?"  Hallett  exclaimed,  with  an  in- 
tensity of  wonder  she  echoed. 

"Visit  here,  you  mean?" 

"Visit  a  woman  who  could  stand  for  a  pile  like  this." 

"Felicia  May  was  here." 

"You  think  that  was  the  bid  he  made  for  her?" 

"I  know  it."    She  spoke  with  entire  conviction. 

' '  And  lost !  Poor  chap !  poor  chap ! "  At  once  Milner 
seemed  more  pathetically  human  to  them.  After  they 
had  regarded  the  uncouth  blunder  of  architecture  for 
some  tune  in  a  helpless  languor,  Hallett  said  feebly, — 
"Well,  we  might  as  well  be  getting  along." 

"Yes.    Mrs.  Pratt  can't  have  this  to  offer." 

They  found  Mrs.  Pratt  in  her  garden,  a  little  square 
enclosure  bounded  by  the  neatest  picket  fence  of 
yellow.  She  was  a  slim,  bright-eyed  old  lady  with  a 
cap  such  as  Lucy  had  seen  in  her  childhood  and  never 
since,  even  as  a  picturesque  survival, — a  lace  affair 
fitted  to  the  head  and  trimmed  with  narrow  ribbon  in 
zigzag  tracks,  culminating  in  two  plump  rosettes  well 
over  the  ears.  She  came  forward  to  the  gate  almost 
as  soon  as  they  were  in  view,  and  waited,  trowel  in 
hand  and  a  smile  on  her  keen  old  face. 

"I  ain't  surprised,"  she  called,  in  a  triumphant 
quaver.  "I  dropped  my  dishcloth,  and  the  cat  was 
washin'  her  face — the  land!  so  it  ain't  you,  after  all." 

This  was  so  patent  a  downfall  that  Lucy  began 
to  hurry,  as  if  she  might  allay  disappointment  by  being 
there  the  sooner.  She  looked  into  the  old  woman's 
face  with  her  pretty,  sympathetic  smile. 

"But  we  came  to  see  you,"  she  said,  engagingly. 
"Who  did  you  think  we  were?" 


THE  DISCOVERY  93 

Mrs.  Pratt's  face  relaxed,  and  she  seemed  to  accept 
the  good-will  of  the  exchange. 

"Why,  I  thought  you  was  sister  Mary's  Charlie  and 
Adelaide.  How  far  have  you  travelled,  dear?" 

Hallett  stood  in  the  background,  poking  at  the 
bouncing-bet  outside  the  fence,  and  wishing  for  a  mo- 
ment he  had  the  entry  to  some  of  Lucy's  easy  and  direct 
ways  of  meeting  men  and  women.  But  then  he  found 
his  cheek  suddenly  warm,  and  looked  at  her  with  a 
little  smile.  It  seemed  quite  as  well  that  she  should 
use  her  aptness  for  them  both.  Lucy  was  speaking, 
telling  their  errand  without  a  single  hesitating  flourish. 

"  We  came  to  find  you  because  you  knew  Mr.  Cecil 
Milner.  He  stayed  with  you  one  summer." 

The  old  lady  was  holding  open  the  gate. 

"  Come  right  in,"  she  said,  and  in  a  moment  they 
were  walking  up  the  path,  where  a  cat,  with  her  tail 
mast  high,  was  walking  down  to  meet  them.  "Get 
away,  Trotty,"  said  Mrs.  Pratt.  "There!  I  don't 
suppose  you'd  turn  out  for  the  queen."  She  brushed 
Trot  aside  with  a  gentle  firmness  and  a  manifest  pride 
in  her  feline  will,  and  when  they  had  reached  the  porch, 
where  jessamine  grew  in  waving  garlands,  looked  in- 
quiringly at  the  two  inviting  chairs. 

"Yes,"  said  Lucy  at  once,  "let's  sit  here.  It's  such 
a  splendid  day." 

Hallett  took  the  step  and  began  acquaintance  with 
Trot,  who  was  wiping  fur  off  her  sleek  sides  by  a  back 
and  forth  weaving  against  his  trouser-leg,  purring  her 
satisfaction  meantime. 

'You  set  right  down,"  said  Mrs.  Pratt.  "I've  got 
some  nice  root  beer." 


94  VANISHING  POINTS 

Presently  Lucy  had  off  her  hat,  and  they  were  all, 
except  Trot,  drinking  beer  very  happily.  The  old 
lady  set  down  her  glass. 

t '  You  friends  of  his?  "  she  asked.  There  was  a  sudden 
added  keenness  in  her  eyes.  Lucy  wondered  if  the 
reporter  had  haunted  her  door. 

"  We  never  saw  him,  either  of  us,"  she  said,  with  an 
instant  candor.  "But  we  admire,  we  love  what  he  has 
written  almost  more  than  anything  else.  Just  think! 
you  had  him  a  whole  summer!" 

The  suddenness  of  that  sympathetic  onslaught  found 
its  response.  The  old  lady's  face  brightened.  It  took 
on  a  dry,  shrewd  smile. 

"  "Twas  a  kind  of  a  pleasant  summer,"  she  said. 

"I  suppose  he  used  to  sit  here  on  this  very  porch  and 
talk,"  said  Lucy,  cleverly. 

Hallett  looked  at  the  ground,  and  felt  as  if  a  crystal 
were  forming  and  as  if  he,  moving,  might  jar  the  atoms. 

"Oftentimes,"  said  Mrs.  Pratt. 

"Now,  if  I  were  you,  I  suppose  I  should  remember 
every  word  he  said.  You  see,  I  like  him  so." 

Mrs.  Pratt  took  off  her  spectacles  and  held  them  in 
one  hand.  It  seemed  as  if  in  the  resultant  haze  she 
could  think  better. 

"Some  things  I  remember,"  she  said,  "I  used  to  plan 
to  set  out  everything  in  the  spring,  but  he  was  pos- 
sessed to  have  me  do  it  in  the  fall." 

"Oh,  in  the  garden?" 

"Yes.  Twas  all  about  the  gardin."  Mrs.  Pratt 
looked  a  mild  surprise.  "You  see,  'twas  summer  time 
when  he  was  here,  and  that  made  it  natural  to  think 
about  the  gardin.  He  started  that  poppy  bed." 


THE  DISCOVERY  95 

"That  poppy  bed!"  Lucy  was  looking  at  it  with 
instant  reverence — a  neat  oblong  where  light-green 
leaves  were  showing. 

"No,  no,  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Pratt.  "Not  them  same 
plants,  though  they  did  come  from  the  seed  I  saved 
from  his.  He  sowed  it  in  that  very  place  the  fall  he 
was  here,  not  long  before  he  went  away." 

Lucy  feared  lest  the  thin  trickle  of  reminiscence 
might  find  a  boulder  or  choke  itself  in  sand. 

"Was  Trot  here  that  summer? "  she  asked,  idiotically, 
because  Trot  at  that  moment  essayed  a  paw  on  her 
knee. 

"Oh  yes,  Trot  was  a  kitten  then.  Nice  kitten  as 
ever  you  see." 

"Did  he  like  her?" 

"Well,  I  don't  recollect,"  said  Mrs.  Pratt,  musingly, 
and  they  could  see  that  she  was  considering  Trot's 
past  to  the  exclusion  of  Cecil  Milner's.  "I  guess  so. 
Most  folks  do  like  a  nice  kitten  same  as  Trot  was." 

Lucy  had  cast  a  daring  eye  backward  into  the  entry. 

"Mrs.  Pratt,"  she  ventured,  "where  did  he  sleep? 
Which  was  his  room?" 

Mrs.  Pratt  began  to  laugh  noiselessly. 

"Well,"  said  she,  "seems  funny  to  tell,  but  he  slept 
in  the  shed  chamber." 

"The  shed  chamber!" 

"Yes.  'Twas  a  cool  summer  that  year,  and  when 
he  see  the  shed  chamber  nothin'  would  do  but  he  must 
have  it.  'Tis  kind  of  long  and  low,  an  old  ancient  sort 
of  a  place.  I  offered  to  move  out  my  wheel  and  the 
little  flax-wheel,  but  he  wouldn't  hear  to't.  So  he  had 
his  trunk  in  there  and  a  good  big  table — we  fetched 


96  VANISHING  POINTS 

that  up  out  o'  the  shed,  he  and  me, — and  he  seemed  to 
think  'twas  fixed  complete." 

"Is  it  just  as  it  was?"  Lucy  asked,  in  a  throbbing 
haste.  "Oh,  Mrs.  Pratt,  you  haven't  changed  it!" 

Mrs.  Pratt  nodded  her  head  in  what  looked  like  a 
slow-coming  triumph.  It  seemed  evident  that  she  had 
a  set  of  feelings  neatly  concealed,  but  that  she  kept 
them  burnished  to  a  state  of  great  intensity,  and  that 
when  she  did  bring  them  out  they  might  really  dazzle. 
She  went  on: 

"Up  in  the  cupboard  is  his  papers — " 

"His  papers?"  Lucy  gasped. 

Mrs.  Pratt  nodded. 

"There's  some  he  was  workhV  on  the  very  day  he 
went  away.  Them  pages  were  on  the  floor.  I  picked 
'em  up  and  saved  'em." 

"Where  are  they?"  asked  Lucy,  sharply. 

Mrs.  Pratt  regarded  her  with  mildness. 

"Why,"  said  she,  "they're  up  there  in  the  corner 
cupboard." 

Lucy  half  rose  from  her  seat.  She  found  herself 
breathless. 

"Why,  yes,"  said  Mrs.  Pratt,  with  a  sympathetic 
gentleness.  "Why,  yes,  dear,  you  can  see  'em  if  you 
want." 

Now  Hallett  was  on  his  feet,  and  in  a  dazed  way 
he  and  Lucy  followed  through  the  kitchen  and  up  to  the 
shed  chamber.  Mrs.  Pratt  opened  the  door  and  went 
bustling  in,  as  if  there  might  be  deeds  to  do  before  it 
was  fit  to  welcome  them,  and  they  stood  at  the  sill  with 
an  according  reverence,  Hallett  looking  over  Lucy's 
shoulder,  her  hand  in  his.  It  was  a  shadowy  room  full 


THE  DISCOVERY  97 

of  beautiful  shapes,  from  the  old-fashioned  bed,  a  carved 
four-poster,  to  the  spinning-wheel  in  the  corner  and  the 
little  flax-wheel  under  the  eaves.  Mrs.  Pratt,  looking 
from  the  room  to  them  with  some  apologetic  sense  of 
its  having  been  dusted  at  least  a  week  ago,  became 
newly  aware  of  the  measure  the  place  meant  to 
them. 

"Why!"  she  said.  "Why,  there!  Well,  come  in. 
You  set  here,  if  you  want,  and  I'll  run  down  and  see 
about  dinner.  I'm  goin'  to  have  you  stop."  But  before 
she  went  she  threw  open  the  door  of  the  narrow  corner 
cupboard.  "They're  in  there,"  she  said,  "the  papers. 
You  can  look  at  'em  if  you  want.  You'll  know  how  to 
treat  'em;  but  I  guess  they  ain't  of  value  to  anybody 
but  me.  Now,  Trot,  you  come  along  downstairs.  You 
needn't  think  you're  goin'  to  poke  your  nose  into  every- 
thing that's  goin'."  But  again,  after  one  of  her  futile 
starts,  she  stopped  to  say,  "That  bundle  in  there  di- 
rected to  him  is  what  come  after  he  went  away." 

Lucy  made  a  noiseless  rush  to  the  cupboard  and 
took  out  an  oblong  package  done  up  in  brown  paper 
and  addressed,  in  a  woman's  hand,  to  Cecil  Milner, 
Esquire. 

"You  never  sent  it  to  him!"  she  cried. 

"He  said  not  to,"  Mrs.  Pratt  returned.  "He  left 
kind  of  sudden.  I  always  thought  he  had  news  from 
somewhere,  bad  news  maybe,  and  he  says,  'Mrs.  Pratt, 
you  send  on  the  letters  if  the  postmaster  lets  any  slip 
by  him,  but  there's  a  bundle  of  proof  comin','  he  says, 
'any  minute,  and  you  needn't  bother  about  that.'  He 
said  he  should  see  'em  at  the  office  on  the  way,  and 
he'd  have  'em  strike  off  some  more — " 


98  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Yes!  yes!"  the  two  listeners  found  themselves  say- 
ing together.  "Yes ! " 

"So  it  come,  and  I've  always  kep'  it  up  here.  I 
kinder  liked  to  see  his  name  on  the  bundle."  Again 
she  returned  to  add:  "Seems  if  I  was  rememberin' 
more  and  more  of  what  he  used  to  talk  about.  One 
thing  we  used  to  thresh  out  by  the  hour.  I  tell  you  we 
had  it  hot  and  heavy." 

"What  was  it?"  Lucy  asked. 

"Tongues  and  sounds.  He  never  could  abide  'em. 
I  made  him  as  good  a  butter  sauce  as  ever  you  see,  but 
he  said  they  were — well,  I  dunno'  exactly  what  he 
did  say.  But  he  made  it  up  on  beet  greens." 

She  was  really  gone.  Lucy  and  Hallett  looked  at 
each  other  a  full  minute.  He  was  pale  and  she  was 
flaming  red.  Then,  together,  they  went  forward  to  the 
corner  cupboard  and  she  waited  for  him  to  take  down 
a  sheet  of  paper  covered  with  the  beautiful  precise 
hand  they  knew.  He  pored  over  it  a  moment.  She 
could  wait  no  longer. 

"What  is  it!"  she  asked. 

"The  'Gate  of  Horn'.  The  middle  of  the  story, 
where  she  goes  to  France." 

"Ah!  then  he'd  copied  it.  That  package,  Hallett! 
That's  not  proof." 

"What  is  it?"  asked  Hallett,  stupidly. 

"Proof  never  was  sent  like  that.  Look  at  the  hand- 
writing. Look  at  the  seal."  As  she  spoke,  her  clever 
audacious  fingers  were  slipping  the  string. 

He  was  aghast. 

"You're  not  going  to  open  it?" 

"Why  shouldn't  I?    He  hasn't  a  relation  on  earth. 


THE  DISCOVERY  99 

As  for  his  friends — if  we're  not  friends,  adorers!"  The 
edge  of  the  seal  cracked  neatly  upward.  She  put  in  a 
testing  thumb  and  finger  and  drew  forth  a  letter. 
Hallett  stood  apart,  watching  her.  It  seemed  to  him,  as 
to  her,  as  if  they  were  in  some  strange  new  world  where 
property  rights  were  logical,  and  he  who  could  estimate 
a  thing  like  this  was  the  one  to  own  it. 

"It's  his  handwriting,"  he  offered,  his  voice  choking 
with  the  thought. 

"Yes.  And  there's  no  postmark.  These  letters 
weren't  mailed.  They  were  put  under  a  stone  in  the 
Taylor  grounds,  in  the  foolish  old  way,  or  they  were 
slipped  into  a  hand — " 

"Is  that  her  name  on  the  envelope?" 

"Yes.  And  it  begins,"  said  Lucy  hi  a  clear,  high 
voice,  "the  letter  begins,  ' Dearest.'  Read  it."  She 
spread  it  before  him,  and  together  they  read.  Here 
Cecil  Milner  had  poured  out  his  heart  to  a  woman  he 
loved.  This  was  the  first  letter,  the  beginning  of  his 
revelation  to  her.  He  told  her,  in  swift,  clear  phrases, 
what  it  had  been  to  him  to  find  her.  It  had  been  first 
a  flood  of  light.  The  light  had  illuminated  his  poor 
house  of  life.  How  plain  a  place  it  was  for  her  to  enter! 
But  she  must  enter,  be  its  architect  and  builder,  or  the 
house  itself  would  fall.  His  way  of  telling  it  all,  quite 
simply  as  he  did  it,  was  perhaps  like  a  description  of 
sunrise  by  a  poet  who  had  only  just  seen  the  sun.  He 
had  been  writing  about  love  all  his  life,  he  told  her, 
writing  and  thinking  about  it,  and  he  had  awaited  it, 
too,  for  himself,  in  an  expectation  not  so  very  calm. 
Now  here  she  was,  the  figure  in  his  dream.  She  stood 
there  with  that  sun  flooding  her;  and  she  was  real. 


100  VANISHING  POINTS 

They  finished  reading  together,  like  race-horses  fly- 
ing and  coming  neck  and  neck  to  the  end,  his  dear  name 
signed  after  a  protestation  their  eyes  blinded  to  see. 
Hallett  had  been  holding  the  sheet.  He  put  it  carefully 
into  its  folds  and  laid  it  down,  his  hands  trembling. 

"  Lucy ! "  he  whispered.    "  Lucy ! " 

She  was  in  his  arms  and  their  lips  had  touched.  It 
was  Hallett,  always  before  this  the  unpractical,  dream- 
ing one,  who  thought  first  of  possibilities. 

"A  house  couldn't  cost  much  if  it's  no  bigger  than 
this,"  he  said,  with  certainty. 

"No." 

"You  don't  want  to  live  in  town?" 

She  shook  her  head,  and  then  mutely  dropped  it  to 
his  shoulder.  But  in  a  moment  she  remembered  Cecil 
Milner.  She  withdrew  from  her  lover  and  took  up  the 
letter  from  the  table,  holding  it  delicately,  as  if  its  right 
to  be  guarded  gave  it  new  fragility. 

"What  shall  we  do  about  it? "  she  asked. 

His  eyes  had  travelled  to  the  package,  open  at  the 
end  now  and  showing  the  torn  edges  of  other  envelopes. 

"There  are  twelve,  at  least,"  he  answered.  "What 
a  haul  for  Tommy  Atwood!" 

"What  a  haul  for  anybody!" 

"But  he's  the  only  one  with  the  infernal  cleverness 
to  get  them." 

"Mrs.  Pratt  won't  let  him.  Can't  you  see  she  adored 
Cecil  Milner?" 

"Ah,  well,  he'd  find  arguments  even  for  her.  Let 
him  once  smell  it  out  and  he'd  have  some  specious 
reason,  for  needing  it — all  for  Milner's  good,  his  name 
or  fame  or  something." 


THE  DISCOVERY  101 

',    >>,'''    *         ' '  *  > 

"  Perhaps  you  need  thenu.BM*. 

"  I  do  need  them. ' '  He  m^ant  it,  fijrioiusj  J.i  f  l;  I-  need 
his  heart,  the  core  of  his  heart,  if  I'm  to  write  a  life  of 
him." 

"Hallett,  you're  not  going  to  print  them?" 

She  hung  upon  his  answer,  as  if  it  might  weld  them 
or  part  them  forever.  Hallett  looked  at  her  with  his 
wide,  unworldly  gaze.  It  held  surprise  that  she  could 
ask. 

"No,"  he  said.    "Why,  no!" 

She  gave  a  little  nod,  all  satisfaction. 

"They're  not  safe  here,"  he  added,  frowningly. 

"Shall  we  have  her  up  and  tell  her  what  we've  done? " 

"Yes.    We've  got  to." 

Lucy  stepped  to  the  head  of  the  stairs. 

"Mrs.  Pratt!"  she  called. 

They  heard  her  moving  about  the  kitchen  with  a 
brisk  lightness.  Presently  she  answered  the  call  and 
came  up,  a  kitchen  knife  in  her  hand,  her  face  bearing 
some  signs  of  vexation.  But  it  was  not  for  them. 

"Sometimes  seems  to  me,  I  never'll  try  to  use  an  old 
potato,"  she  declared.  "But  what's  anybody  going 
to  do — new  ones  not  come  and  old  ones  as  they  be? 
It's  betwixt  hay  and  grass  with  them,  as  'tis  with  every- 
thing else." 

Hallett  began,  and  Lucy  admired  the  crisp  decision 
of  his  tone. 

"Mrs.  Pratt,  we  opened  that  package." 

The  old  lady's  eyes  snapped  once,  whether  in  anger 
or  not  it  was  impossible  to  say. 

"Well!"  she  remarked,  and  waited.  Lucy  rushed 
tumultuously  in. 


102  VANISHING  POINTS 

"We  couldn't  Help  it,  Mrs.  Pratt.  There  isn't  a 
person  -speaking,  the  English  language  to-day  that  could 
have  helped  it,  knowing  that  package  belonged  to 
Mr.  Milner."  Mrs.  Pratt  compressed  her  lips  slightly. 
Her  shrewd  eyes  were  plainly  satirical.  "Oh,  I  know 
it,"  Lucy  answered,  reading  the  glance.  "You  are 
thinking  you  didn't  open  it.  But  then  you  thought  it 
was  proof.  It's  not  proof." 

"What  is  it,  then?" 

"It's  letters,  his  own  letters  written  to  some  one  he 
dearly  loved.  They  were  returned  to  him." 

"'Twas  that  woman,"  said  Mrs.  Pratt,  in  a  quick 
self-betrayal. 

Hallett  and  Lucy  exchanged  a  glance.  Then  it  was 
known  there  that  summer.  Felicia  May  had  bound 
the  giant  to  her  car,  and  everybody  saw. 

"We  have  read  one  of  the  letters,"  Lucy  continued. 

Mrs.  Pratt's  eyes  were  on  the  package  in  Hallett's 
hand. 

"So  now  you  want  to  print  'em,"  she  commented, 
slowly,  in  a  tone  betraying  nothing. 

"We  want  them,"  Lucy  went  on,  swiftly.  "We 
want  them — to  burn.  Nobody  has  any  right  to  these 
letters  now,  have  they,  Mrs.  Pratt?" 

The  old  woman  slowly  shook  her  head.  A  dimness 
suffused  her  eyes.  Her  lips  moved.  "Poor  boy!"  she 
seemed  to  be  saying.  Again  they  had  a  glimpse  into 
her  understanding  of  what  had  gone  before.  It  seemed 
to  make  that  summer,  the  last  one  he  had  had,  an  in- 
tolerable one  for  him  to  have  borne,  for  them  to  re- 
member. Even  this  woman  who  served  him  with  the 
needful  things  of  life  must  have  seen  him  sometimes 


THE  DISCOVERY  103 

off  his  guard,  pallid,  distraught,  if  the  siren  flouted  him. 
Perhaps  she  had  watched  him  in  Felicia's  train,  when 
that  young  beauty  trailed  her  splendor  across  New  Eng- 
land, thence  to  return  to  India,  its  suns  and  mysteries. 

"Well,"  said  Mrs.  Pratt,  "you  want  to  burn  'em 
now?" 

"Now,"  said  Hallett.  He  was  still  holding  them  with 
a  firmness  that  indicated  his  intention  not  to  relinquish 
them  save  for  a  purpose  he  approved.  The  room  was 
very  still.  Bees  hummed  loudly  outside  the  window, 
and  leaves  stirring  there  made  their  soft  sound  audible. 

"Well,"  said  Mrs.  Pratt  again,  at  length.  Her  voice 
moved  in  an  eloquent,  still  way,  as  if  younger  mother- 
hood cried  in  her.  "I  guess  we  might  as  well  go  down 
to  the  fireplace.  You  fetch  'em,  if  you  feel  to." 

She  led  the  way,  and  Hallett,  with  the  letters,  fol- 
lowed next.  They  went  through  the  kitchen,  where 
dinner  was  beginning,  and  the  pot,  waiting  for  the 
unworthy  potatoes,  boiled  merrily,  and  so  on  into  the 
guarded  quiet  of  the  parlor,  where  the  closed  blinds 
gave  a  green  seclusion,  and  the  air  between  their  slats 
stirred  dried  grasses  and  the  peacock  feathers  over  the 
glass.  Mrs.  Pratt  led  them  to  the  hearth. 

"I  had  the  stove  took  out  in  the  early  fall  when  he 
was  here,"  she  said.  "He  was  terrible  set  against  air- 
tights.  There!  here's  the  fireplace  just  as  'twas." 

Hallett  gave  the  package  over  to  Lucy,  and  then 
walked  away  to  regard  the  portrait  of  General  Grant. 
Lucy  turned  to  Mrs.  Pratt. 

"Don't  you  think  you'd  better  do  it?"  she  asked. 

"No,  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Pratt.  "You  see  to  it,  just 
as  you  feel  to,  same  as  if  I  wasn't  here." 


104  VANISHING  POINTS 

Lucy  unfolded  the  first  letter  and  laid  it  fluttering 
on  the  andirons.  She  lighted  it,  and  one  after  another 
drew  forth  the  rest  and  burned  them  at  the  flame. 
Hallett  still  had  his  back  turned,  and  Mrs.  Pratt  gazed 
at  the  mantel,  evidently  at  the  picture  of  a  stern-looking 
man  with  long  hair  and  a  dickey.  Once  she  lifted  it 
from  the  shelf  and  ran  her  apron  hem  along  the  top  of 
the  case,  to  remove  an  imagined  grain  of  dust. 

"There!"  said  Lucy,  at  length.  "There!"  She 
wanted  to  add,  "There  is  Cecil  Milner's  heart,"  but 
the  event  had  passed  too  quietly  to  admit  of  fervid 
comment. 

"There!"  said  Mrs.  Pratt,  in  echo.  "Now  111  see 
about  dinner.  You  go  where  you're  a  mind  to,  out  in 
the  garden,  or  set  right  here.  Ill  call  you  when  it's 
ready." 

After  she  had  gone,  Hallett  turned  abruptly  and  came 
back  to  the  fireplace,  where  Lucy  stood  as  if  distraught 
over  a  sacrifice  that  had  cost.  He  put  his  arm  about 
her,  and  she  turned  to  him. 

"We've  burned  up  what  the  world  can't  duplicate," 
he  said,  passionately.  She  nodded.  "Rossetti,  Keats 
• — there  they  are,  blossoming,  flaming  to  eternity.  His 
letters—"  ' 

She  drew  herself  away  and  faced  him. 

"Wasn't  it  right?" 

"Yes,  it  was  right;  but  it's  bitter,  bitter." 

"You're  not  sorry?" 

"Oh,  I  can't  be  sorry.  Somehow  they  were  ours, 
his  and  ours.  They've  passed  on  something  to  us.  He 
could  only  dream  it.  We'll  live  it  for  him,  dearest- 
dearest!" 


THE  MASTER 

STILLMAN,  senior  editor  of  that  magazine  which 
might  have  been  called  The  Pride  of  America, 
was  walking  rapidly  away  from  his  office  through 
the  November  sleet.  He  was  a  tall,  thin-cheeked  man 
with  deep-set  eyes,  and  stiff  hair  standing  straight  up 
from  his  forehead;  and  this  latter  was  so  expressive  a 
part  of  his  outline  that  those  who  were  accustomed  to 
his  indoor  look  were  apt  to  cry  out  upon  any  hat  he  might 
wear,  as  an  unwelcome  disguise.  At  the  corner  another 
man,  slightly  bent,  and  the  more  so  to-night  because  he 
was  holding  his  coat  close  and  scudding  under  the  blast, 
almost  ran  into  him  and  stopped  an  instant  in  per- 
functory apology.  But  Stillman  knew  him  and  held 
out  his  hand. 

"Why,  it's  not  you,  Brainerd!"  he  said,  warmly 
against  the  icy  wind.  "I  didn't  know  you  were  in 
town.  Going  to  the  office,  were  you?" 

"I  knew  I  shouldn't  find  you  so  late,"  said  the  other, 
"but  I  was  near  and  thought  I'd  venture  it.  On  your 
way  home?  I'll  walk  a  step  with  you." 

He  turned,  and  they  went  on  together,  Stillman  with 
a  hand  on  his  friend's  arm  now  in  affectionate  solicitude. 
Brainerd  meant  a  great  deal  to  him,  not  only  as  the 
writer  of  the  new  serial  the  magazine  had  in  its  safe,  but 
as  primary  agent  in  the  best  part  of  the  literary  lifo 
signalizing  the  last  quarter-century.  Younger  men 

105 


106  VANISHING  POINTS 

might  not  prize  that  life  to  the  exclusion  of  the  active 
present,  Stillman  sometimes  thought;  but  though  he 
was  editor  of  a  magazine  that  had  got  to  keep  itself 
up  to  date,  if  it  meant  to  live,  he  was  almost  sure  he 
did.  It  was  too  dark  in  these  down-town  byways  to 
show  him  exactly  what  manner  of  look  Brainerd  was 
wearing  to-night;  but  he  knew,  from  old  contemplation 
of  it  in  their  confabs  running  through  the  years  when 
they  had  found  each  in  the  other  the  nearest  approach 
to  some  of  the  answers  life  had  to  give.  There  was  the 
great  forehead,  the  statesman  face  with  its  sensitive 
mouth  and  burning  eyes,  the  signs  of  indomitable  will 
that  had,  so  Stillman  believed,  wrecked  his  friend  so 
far  as  all  the  chances  of  a  paltry  success  were  concerned, 
but  wrecked  him  to  cast  him  on  what  headland  of 
austere  achievement  only  the  immortals  knew.  Brain- 
erd was  speaking,  still  holding  his  coat  tight  with  one 
hand  and  ready  to  chase  his  soft  hat  with  the  other. 

"About  your  letter,  Stillman;  I  had  to  come.  I 
really  had  to.  It's  wormwood  to  me  to  refuse  anything 
you  ask,  but  that  I  simply  couldn't  do.  Why,  that's 
the  crux  of  the  story,  the  nub  of  the  whole  thing.  Don't 
ask  me  to  leave  it  out.  I  can't.  I  won't." 

Stillman  burst  into  a  delighted  laugh.  It  sounded 
as  if  he  were  glad  to  be  denied. 

" Bless  you,  old  man!"  he  said.  "I  didn't  ask  you 
to  leave  it  out,  not  in  propria  persona.  It  was  three  of 
the  young  cockerels  in  the  office.  They  guided  my 
pen.  I  told  'em  you  wouldn't  do  it,  but  I  was  perfectly 
willing  to  let  them  have  a  try.  Don't  you  worry  your 
head  about  that.  The  thing's  going  in  as  you  wrote  it, 
never  fear!" 


THE  MASTER  107 

He  had  paused  before  the  door  of  a  dingy  building, 
competing  in  no  way  with  the  city's  brilliance  except  in 
a  modest  candleshine  from  its  windows. 

"See  here,  Brainerd,"  he  continued,  in  some  hesita- 
tion, as  if  he  asked  a  dubitable  thing,  "come  along  in. 
It's  a  dinner  of  the  Tribunal,  the  club  I  told  you  about 
where  we  pitch  into  art  and  letters,  and  slang  one  an- 
other to  beat  the  band.  Come  in." 

Brainerd  shook  his  head  and  tried  to  clutch  his  collar 
tighter. 

' '  No,"  he  said,  "  oh  no !  I'm  not  the  man  for  dinners. 
I've  nothing  in  particular  to  say,  unless  I've  got  my  pen 
in  hand,  and  I'm  an  awful  damper  on  the  flow  of  others. 
I  get  thinking  about  things — other  things  a  mile  away. 
That  palsies  the  mirth." 

"But  they'd  feel  flattered,"  Stillman  urged  weakly, 
as  one  who  would  fain  believe  in  the  argument  he  him- 
self advanced.  "  They're  mostly  young  men,  and  it's  an 
honor  to  have  you  sit  down  with  them.  They  ought 
to  have  the  sense  to  know  it." 

"Ought  to!"  Brainerd  jeered,  yet  with  a  perfect 
candor.  "Well,  so  they  ought,  if  it's  a  question  of 
years,  like  reverencing  your  Chinese  grandmother  be- 
cause she's  weather-worn.  But  for  anything  else!  No, 
no,  Stillman,  no!  you're  well  aware  they  don't  think 
anything  about  me  except  as  an  old  duffer  that's 
elected  to  write  in  a  lingo  they  can't  abide.  That's 
some  of  them.  They're  the  ones  that  have  helped 
compile  a  neat  little  biographical  sketch  of  me  tucked 
away  in  the  editorial  pigeonhole  somewhere.  The  rest 
are  the  humorists.  They  wake  up  once  in  a  while  in 
the  silly  season  or  when  the  mother-in-law  joke  palls, 


108  BANISHING  POINTS 

to  give  an  imitation  of  me,  more  or  less  clever.  But 
tolerate  me  at  dinner!  They  wouldn't,  they  couldn't. 
Good  night,  old  chap.  I'm  staying  at  the  Pennsylvania 
over  there.  To-morrow  I'll  drop  in  to  see  you." 

Stillman  put  out  his  hand. 

"Anything  on  to-night?"  he  asked.  "You  wouldn't 
let  me  come  round  after  the  dinner?  We  break  up 
early.  Some  of  the  fellows  have  a  night  shift,  and  I 
can  get  away  with  the  first." 

"Let  you!  guess  I  would.  My  grate  is  heaped  and 
there's  a  modest  coal-hod  hard  by.  We'll  have  a 
pipe." 

So  they  parted;  and  Stillman,  pausing  at  the  shabby 
door  before  he  rang  the  bell,  watched  his  friend  away 
through  the  storm  and  wondered,  as  he  did  at  every 
sight  of  Brainerd  and  every  syllable  from  him,  over  the 
fatuity  of  things  here  below.  Have  men,  he  mused, 
so  veiled  their  eyes  that  the  vision  has  to  be  hung 
before  them  in  every  possible  light  before  they  bow  to 
it?  He  had  hoped  to  see  in  his  own  tune  the  sufficient 
recognition  of  Brainerd,  but  the  years  were  going  fast 
and  little  pewter  gods  were  being  set  up  on  every  shelf. 
This  meant  a  great  deal  to  Stillman.  He  was,  in  a  way, 
a  controller  of  destinies.  Many  a  writer  of  poten- 
tial power  had  he  heartened  and  welcomed  gladly  to 
the  august  portals  of  his  magazine,  and  to  many  a  man 
of  mark,  undeservedly  exploited,  had  he  refused  ad- 
mittance. Yet  on  Brainerd's  standing  he  had  been 
able  to  cast  no  illuminating  glow.  He  could  crown 
him,  but  he  had  to  go  out  and  pluck  the  laurels  for  it 
himself.  The  stubborn  public  refused  to  help  him. 
Out  of  his  discouragement  he  heaved  a  sigh  and  went 


THE  MASTER  109 

pondering  into  the  low-studded  room  with  its  long 
table,  where  the  talk  was  just  beginning. 

When  they  sat  down  there  were  an  even  twenty  of 
them.  The  laurel  wreath,  silent  reminder  of  the  meed 
the  world  accords,  stern,  reproachful  token  no  one 
of  them  might  inherit,  lay  on  the  table,  its  only  decora- 
tion; thus  it  was  always,  the  one  ceremonial  it  involved 
being  its  burning,  in  a  circle  of  silence,  at  the  close. 

This  dinner,  though  its  date  was  that  of  a  regular 
meeting,  was  understood  to  be  especially  in  honor  of 
Jerry  Burton,  on  the  eve  of  sailing  for  "  abroad' '.  Jerry 
had,  unaffectedly  to  his  own  surprise,  made  a  modest 
pile  of  money  out  of  a  novel  his  colleagues  regarded 
slightingly,  and  he,  on  his  part,  scored  as  no  good  at  all; 
and  he  now,  he  as  frankly  stated,  having  propitiated  the 
lesser  gods  and  got  what  he  could  out  of  them,  meant 
to  take  their  largess,  and  live  as  long  as  possible  in  the 
classic  seclusion  of  Cambridge  or  Oxford,  write  essays 
and  sacrifice  to  the  high  gods  only.  He  was  a  little 
fellow  with  a  weazened  face  drawn  to  the  point  of  an 
ineffectual  chin,  and  sitting  beside  big  Flynn,  the 
dramatic  critic  of  the  Scatterbrain,  he  looked  even  more 
inconsiderable,  and  so  Flynn  told  him,  though  in  terms 
less  crudely  fitted  to  the  basis  of  their  relative  deserts. 

"  What  kind  of  an  emissary  are  you,  anyway,  to  send 
over  to  the  United  Kingdom?  "  said  he,  after  the  fashion 
he  found  suited  to  his  acquiescent  chum,  "you  that  have 
faked  up  a  bally  book  out  of  nothing?" 

"Not  out  of  nothing/ '  said  Jerry,  peering  through 
his  wine  as  if  it  were  a  crystal  ball  and  he  meant  to  see 
the  future  of  more  ten-strikes  in  it.  "Out  of  reminis- 
cences of  other  books  I  didn't  fake." 


110  VANISHING  POINTS 

"  Right  you  are.  And  you're  on  Easy  Street,  and 
look  at  me!  I've  done  my  three  columns  a  day  reg'lar 
for  the  last  eight  years,  and  there's  no  Oxford  in  mine." 

"  There  is  something  reminiscent  in  your  book, 
Jerry,  and  that's  a  fact,"  said  Glendon  Springs,  a 
freckle-faced  young  fellow  farther  down  the  table.  He 
drew  his  pale  brows  together  over  his  pale  eyes  and 
scrutinized  the  statement,  having  made  it.  "It's  a 
bad  book,  infernally  bad.  You  know  I  said  so  in  my 
review,  so  I've  a  right  to  say  it  here.  It's  bad  as  they 
make  'em,  but  it's  reminiscent  of  something  good." 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  said  Jerry,  with  a  genuine 
carelessness.  The  book  had  never  markedly  interested 
him,  except  as  matter  for  wonder  that  so  much  money 
had  been  snatched  out  of  it.  "Don't  ask  me." 

Stillman  looked  quickly  up  at  the  moment.  Some- 
thing they  did  not  say,  and  certainly  had  not  even 
recognized  themselves,  seemed  to  suggest  to  him  im- 
plications of  vital  importance. 

"You  know  we've  been  negotiating  with  Brainerd 
for  a  serial,"  he  mentioned  to  the  man  next  him,  but 
in  a  tone  to  be  heard  accurately  over  the  small  area  of 
talk.  "I've  been  looking  it  through." 

"Same  old  sixpence?"  called  a  little  man,  like  a 
beetle,  marked  off  by  stiff  black  hairs  and  hard  black 
eyes.  "Fog  so  thick  you  can't  see  your  hand  before 
you?  Style  twisted  into  double  bow-knots,  till  you 
think  you're  untying  macrame  lace?" 

"What  in  the  blazes  is  macrame  lace?"  inquired  a 
rosy,  globular  man  who  was  eating  his  dinner  almost 
worshipfully  if  he  chanced  on  a  toothsome  morsel,  and 
profanely  when  his  expectations  were  balked.  He 


THE  MASTER  111 

wrote  poetry  of  a  most  delicate  and  crystalline  type- 
like  hoar  frost  and  snow  wreaths,  said  his  following. 
That  question  was  allowed  to  pale  into  obscurity,  for 
the  editor  was  continuing  in  the  path  his  reflections 
had  evidently  decreed. 

"I'm  not  so  sure  it's  obscure.  I'm  not  sure  but  it's 
devilish  clear,  if  only  you've  the  tune  to  unravel 
it." 

"Trouble  is  with  our  day  and  generation,  we  haven't 
time,"  snapped  out  a  little  red-haired  man,  all  spec- 
tacles and  trembling  upper  lip.  He  got  his  living  by 
dramatic  notes,  and  was  in  a  perpetual  state  of  truculent 
honesty,  defending  his  point  of  view  with  a  passionate 
haste  even  before  it  had  been  assaulted.  He  was 
perennially  angry  and  fitted  out  for  the  fray  by  a  stiff 
taste  in  adjectives.  "We  haven't  time  for  anything 
but  skimming  surfaces.  It's  damnable,  positively 
damnable.  It's  stultifying  and  corrupting,  and  the 
punishment  for  it  is  that  we're  condemned  to  live  in 
the  pit  of  our  own  fatuity." 

Harrison  Brisbane,  a  slow,  grave  man,  who  did  hack- 
work on  half  a  dozen  dailies,  had  been  looking  down 
at  his  untouched  plate  with  an  air  of  detachment  both 
from  the  food  and  the  circle  it  gave  pretext  for.  He 
never  ate  much  at  these  meetings.  He  never  talked 
much.  But  when  he  did  speak,  the  men,  even  the  ones 
outside  easy  earshot,  listened. 

"Speaking  of  failures — "  but  nobody  had  been 
speaking  of  them.  Only  each  individual  had  been 
conscious,  down  in  the  midst  of  bitter  acquiescences  and 
old  sick  desires,  that  if  failure  was  to  be  cited,  the 
finger  of  life  would  point  to  him,  saying  inexorably, 


112  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Thou  art  the  man."  "Speaking  of  failures,  should 
you  say  Brainerd  was  a  failure?" 

The  question  seemed  to  hang  there  in  air  for  them  to 
scrutinize,  perhaps  to  pelt  with  answers.  But  for  a 
good  many  minutes  nobody  took  a  shot  at  it.  Every- 
body got  thoughtful,  but  all  the  faces  looked  the  same 
complexion.  Brainerd  most  evidently  was  a  failure. 

"Haven't  you  a  word  to  say  for  him,  any  of  you?" 
Stillman  inquired  pleasantly,  with  a  little  smile  on  his 
lips.  "Am  I  the  only  one  to  take  a  hand?  If  I  do, 
you'll  say  it's  because  I've  got  his  serial." 

Jerry,  with  one  of  his  hasty  turns  of  speech,  as  if  he 
were  jumping  into  a  ring,  broke  in  on  the  heels  of  this. 

"Trial!"  he  called.  "Trial!  John  Brainerd  to  be 
tried  by  a  jury  of  his  peers!" 

"It's  an  off  night.  We  weren't  to  try  anybody  to- 
night," the  globular  man  objected.  He  was  lifting 
some  bits  of  mushroom  on  his  fork,  and  looking  as  if, 
before  they  were  irrevocably  eaten,  he  might  like  to 
photograph  them  and  so  preserve  their  sacred  memory. 

"No,"  said  the  little  man  like  a  beetle,  in  his  quick, 
hard  voice,  "but  we  can  do  it  informally.  Let  it  be 
informally.  Go  on,  Brisbane.  Bring  your  accusation." 

The  slow,  grave  man  seemed  to  wait  for  a  moment 
upon  his  own  words,  in  the  sincere  determination  that 
they  should  be  of  proper  weight. 

"I  was  thinking  of  Brainerd  to-day,"  he  said.  "I 
had  occasion  to  review  his  life  briefly  for  a  biographical 
sketch,  the  facts  of  it,  and  I  found  myself  afterward 
coloring  up  the  facts  so  I  could  see  what  they  meant — 
just  as  you  might  put  a  dye  in  clear  water  to  define  the 
shape  of  the  bottle — to  see  what  they  meant  to  the 


THE  MASTER  113 

man  himself.  These  are  the  facts,  as  I  get  them. 
Brainerd  began  by  writing  faithful,  likable  stuff  better 
than  any  of  its  day  in  America.  He  promised  to  be 
one  of  the  immortals — our  little  two-for-a-cent  immor- 
tals, best  we  make.  Well,  all  of  a  sudden  he  changed. 
I  don't  know  whether  he  got  big  head  or  whether  he 
grew  up  and  overtopped  us  so  we  can't  look  up  to  him 
without  a  stiff  neck.  I  don't  know  what  happened  to 
him.  But  the  stuff  changed.  In  the  beginning,  as 
they  say  about  the  last  new  machine,  any  child  could 
run  it.  Any  creature  capable  of  reading  English  could 
take  up  Brainerd's  books  and  understand  'em.  Now —  " 

"  Why,  now,"  said  the  little  man  like  a  beetle — "now 
he's  not  only  obscure,  he's  a  maze,  a  labyrinth.  He 
that  runs  can't  read  it.  If  it's  an  honest  runner,  he 
makes  faces  at  it,  it  gets  him  so  mad." 

"I  wonder  what  they  think  about  it,  the  ones  that 
don't  run,"  said  the  editor,  slowly,  out  of  the  pains- 
taking consideration  he  gave  every  detail  of  the  pa- 
geant passing  before  him,  "the  old  maids  in  country 
towns  that  get  a  book  out  of  the  library,  and,  if  they 
haven't  read  it  in  two  weeks,  only  say  they  'haven't 
quite  finished  it/  and  keep  on  at  their  job  of  half  a 
page  a  day?  I  wonder  what  a  ranchman  would  think 
out  there  on  the  plains — " 

"Have  to  be  a  college  graduate,"  snapped  the  red- 
haired,  spectacled  fellow. 

"Well,  let  him  be  a  college  graduate.  Plenty  of 
university  among  the  cattlemen.  I  wonder  what  any- 
body with  time  and  silence  about  him  like  a  wide 
horizon — why,  boys,  we  haven't  any  time,  we  haven't 
any  silence.  We're  hung  in  a  cage  like  the  kind  old 


114  VANISHING  POINTS 

Balue  invented  for  Louis  XI.,  and  every  time  Wall 
Street  or  a  spectacular  murder  case  or  a  new  theatre 
or  any  other  blasted  madness  of  events  comes  by  us, 
it  gives  us  a  twirl.  But  what  would  any  clear-minded 
fellow  with  brains  under  his  scalp  say  to  John  Brain- 
erd's  stuff  if  he  sat  down  to  it  in  the  stillness — the  kind 
of  stillness  where  you  can  hear  pine-needles  dropping 
round  you,  or  withered  leaves?'7 

There  was  stillness  of  that  sort  at  the  table  for  an 
instant.  Every  man's  mind  returned  to  some  moment  of 
its  own,  when  the  quiet  of  life  had  made  itself  felt  be- 
nignly. The  little  man  like  a  beetle  spoke  first,  in  a  testy 
fashion,  because  the  challenge  had  savored  too  much  of 
sentiment. 

"Well,  what's  the  matter  with  being  clear,  anyway? 
What's  the  advantage  or  the  special  chrism  of  adver- 
tising you're  too  obscure  for  the  masses — grammar 
school  masses?  They're  a  good  fair  average.  Let  the 
grammar  school  throw  a  vote  now  and  then.  If  I  find 
a  spring  of  water  in  the  wilderness,  I  don't  want  to 
stop  and  analyze  it,  do  I?  No,  by  George!  I  want  to 
drink." 

"I  think,  you  know,  he  did  a  fine  thing,"  said  a  young 
fellow  with  thin  light-brown  hair  and  a  delicate  cheek 
like  a  girl's.  He  wrote  such  drastic  comment  and 
criticism  that  men  had  often  threatened,  in  good  set 
terms,  to  lick  him,  and  then,  meeting  him,  had  burst 
into  hoots  of  laughter  at  his  inconsiderable  equipment. 
"I  think  Brainerd  did  a  mighty  fine  thing  when  he 
slipped  out  of  the  race  and  retired  to  that  gloomy  old 
place  of  his  down  in  the  country." 

" Gloomy!"   cried  the  red-haired  man.     "I  guess 


THE  MASTER  115 

you'd  be  gloomy,  and  so  would  your  hall  bedroom, 
if  you  made  as  little  as  Brainerd  makes  in  the  course 
of  a  year.  Why,  his  sales  are  almost  invisible  to  the 
naked  eye.  His  half-yearly  statement  must  be  a  'per- 
fect and  absolute  blank V 

"Yet  here's  Stillman  got  him  for  another  serial. 
Stillman  pays — don't  you,  old  boy?" 

"Yes,"  said  Stillman,  seriously,  "we  pay,  but  we 
can't  do  it  often  for  Brainerd.  The  circulation  wouldn't 
warrant  it." 

"Then  what  in  the  name  of  Jupiter  and  all  his 
satellites  do  you  have  him  at  all  for?"  squeaked  the 
red-haired  little  man. 

Stillman  smiled  and  said  nothing. 

"Now  don't  you  put  on  that  inscrutable  look," 
the  little  man  bade  him.  ' '  That '  I  could-an'-if-I-would' 
sort  of  a  phiz!  If  you  know  anything  to  the  advantage 
of  Brainerd,  tell  it,  right  here  and  now.  He  needs  it 
bad  enough." 

"Bless  you,"  said  the  globular  man,  "we  know 
what  Stillman  has  him  for.  He  has  him  to  keep  up  the 
tone  of  the  magazine.  He's  trying  to  cater  to  the 
octogenarians  who  remember  there  were  giants  in 
New  England  in  those  days,  and  the  giants  wrote  for 
the  magazine  he's  inherited.  He  knows  the  magazine's 
no  such  matter  now,  but  he  wants  to  give  the  octogen- 
arians a  solemn  feast  day  once  in  a  while,  and  hypnotize 
'em  into  thinking  the  wind's  in  the  same  quarter." 

But  Stillman,  though  he  vouchsafed  another  smile 
to  indicate  he  took  no  offence,  still  said  nothing. 

"I've  been  down  there  to  that  dismal  hole  Brainerd's 
retired  to,"  said  the  beetle.  "It  was  an  early  spring 


116  VANISHING  POINTS 

day,  and  there  were  puddles  in  the  road  and  ducks 
drabbling  in  'em  and  a  general  smell  of  mud  and 
nastiness.  And  there  was  Brainerd  in  his  big  bare 
library — I  don't  know  whether  there  was  another 
furnished  room  in  the  house,  but  he  had  a  stack  of 
books — there  he  was,  doing  proof  and  lining  and  inter- 
lining, and  making  a  job  the  compositor  must  have 
cursed  him  for.  I  bet  it  looked  like  half  a  dozen  tem- 
perature charts  woven  into  one  when  he  got  through 
with  it." 

"You  know,"  said  the  red-haired  man,  incisively, 
as  if  he  bit  off  the  words,  "I  think  myself  that  was 
rather  splendid  of  Brainerd,  going  off  down  there. 
He's  the  only  man  of  us  all  that's  had  the  nerve  to 
give  up  the  whole  bloomin'  show  of  things  and  retire 
to  a  corner  to  do  the  work  he  means  to  do." 

"He's  consecrated  to  it,"  said  Stillman,  quietly, 
"Brainerd  is." 

But  because  it  was  so  big  a  word  they  stared  at 
him  a  moment,  and  said  nothing,  even  to  challenge 
it. 

"Now,"  said  Brisbane,  in  his  manner  of  weighing 
what  he  had  to  offer,  "I've  wondered  a  good  deal  if 
the  peculiar  thing  about  Brainerd  isn't  that  he's  obscure. 
It's  that  he's  clear.  But  we're  so  infernally  dull  we 
don't  catch  on.  Don't  you  know  the  wireless  fellows 
and  their  instrument — I  don't  understand  really  the 
smallest  thing  about  it,  so  if  I  get  it  all  wrong,  don't 
blame  me — they  say  the  thing  is  tuned  to  a  certain 
note — G,  it  may  be,  or  A.  And  if  they  don't  get  a 
response,  they  change  their  tune.  Now,  we  don't 
get  Brainerd  really,  any  of  us,  but  it's  because  he  isn't 


THE  MASTER  117 

tuned  to  our  pitch,  and  he's  so — so  inevitable,  he  won't 
change  his  tune." 

"Well,  then,  he  may  as  well  be  writing  his  runic 
rhymes  on  a  piece  of  brick  and  tucking  them  into  the 
sand,"  said  the  red-haired  man,  "for  all  the  good  they 
do." 

"Yes,  that's  pretty  much  it:  for  if  they're  tucked 
into  the  sand,  Man  Friday's  foot'll  stumble  over  'em 
some  day,  and  they'll  be  fished  out  and  Crusoe'll 
read  'em." 

"Well,  I  like  that/'  said  Jerry.  "You  assume 
Crusoe's  going  to  be  so  much  cleverer  than  we  are, 
do  you?" 

"Oh,  by  all  odds,"  said  Brisbane.  "I  think  he's 
going  to  be  clever  enough  to  understand  how  particu- 
larly important  it  is  to  sit  still  and  translate  the  little 
pen  scratches  Brainerd's  been  making  all  these  years, 
down  in  his  dim  old  nest." 

"Oh,  Brainerd  isn't  great,"  said  the  black  beetle, 
decisively.  "That's  the  thing  you'd  say  about  a  chap 
that  was  great,  posterity  and  all  that.  No  he  isn't 
great." 

"I'm  not  prepared  to  say  he  is,"  Brisbane  retorted. 
"Only,  you  ask  Stillman.  I'll  abide  by  what  he  tells 
you." 

But  Stillman  would  not  speak.  He  only  smiled 
again  his  smile  of  a  tolerant  obscurity  and  then  vouch- 
safed the  same  excuse : 

"Oh,  I  can't  exploit  Brainerd.  You'd  think  I  was 
pushing  the  serial.  Some  of  you  fellows  that  write 
notices  would  say  I  was  working  you.  Besides,  I  like 
him  too  well." 


118  VANISHING  POINTS 

Glendon  Springs  took  a  leap  here  from  Brainerd,  the 
unsung,  to  Jerry  Burton,  sitting  with  "all  his  blushing 
honors  thick  upon  him". 

"I  know  who  it  is  your  book's  reminiscent  of,  Burton," 
he  called,  in  the  shrill  delight  of  discovery,  so  loudly 
that  all  of  them  turned  that  way.  "What  a  fool  I 
was  not  to  spot  it  earlier!  Wish  I'd  said  it  in  my  column. 
Why,  it's  Brainerd." 

"The  deuce  it  is!"  said  Jerry,  placidly  eating  his 
roast.  ' '  How  do  you  make  that  out? ' ' 

"Why,  it's  his  very  fist  put  to  another  purpose 
than  he  uses  it  for.  It's  Brainerd  cheapened,  to  sell." 

"Yes,"  said  the  globular  man,  dreamily  regarding 
a  crackly  bit  of  fat  and  then  deciding  what  cubic 
measure  of  bread  would  fit  it.  "I  see  that.  It's  the 
use  of  the  adjective,  it's  that  trick  of  tacking  your 
preposition  on  to  the  end  instead  of  minding  the  gram- 
marians. It's  the  cadence  of  the  sentence,  too.  You're 
a  nice  little  boy,  Glendon,  a  nice  clever  little  boy  to 
think  that  out." 

Jerry  was  undisturbed. 

"Well,"  he  said,  with  philosophy,  "don't  lay  it  up 
against  me.  If  I  did,  I  didn't  know  it." 

"Why,  of  course  you  don't  know  it,"  the  red-haired 
man  declaimed,  piercingly.  "We  don't  any  of  us 
know  it;  but  we  have  to  sit  up  nights  to  keep  from 
falling  into  Brainerd's  pesky  style.  If  you've  once 
read  him  it  clings  to  you;  if  you  keep  on  reading  him 
you  get  saturated  and  you're  lost." 

"We  find  that  in  the  office,"  said  Stillman,  unobtru- 
sively. "I  couldn't  tell  you  the  number  of  stories  that 
are  flung  aside  every  week  without  further  considera- 


THE  MASTER  119 

tion  because  they're  flagrant  imitations  of  Brainerd. 
And  yet,  not  imitations.  It's  unconscious,  all  of  it, 
I'm  willing  to  swear." 

"Oh,  I  don't  know  what's  imitation  and  what  isn't," 
said  the  beetle  man,  gloomily.  "Or  rather,  I  know, 
but  it  wouldn't  be  popular  to  tell.  Look  at  that  fellow 
Out  West  that  took  a  prize  from  the  Flittermouse. 
That  story  was  Brainerd,  nothing  but  Brainerd,  in 
the  form  of  it.  I'm  not  prepared  to  say  the  fellow  didn't 
know  what  he  was  doing.  I  think  he  did." 

"Little  Jerry,  didn't  know,  though,"  said  Burton, 
with  an  unmoved  front.  "He  wrote  his  little  book 
just  as  nice  and  careful  out  of  his  own  head;  and  the 
public,  they  bought  it  and  bought  it  and  bought  it, 
and  paid  down  their  good  money,  and  look  at  little 
Jerry  to-day!  Here  he  sits,  the  cynosure  of  every  eye, 
and  his  steamer  ticket's  at  home  pinned  on  to  a  cushion 
embroidered  for  him  by  an  unknown  girl  that  said 
she  liked  his  book." 

But  nobody  could  laugh.  They  were  all  thinking 
too  hard.  Only  Stillman  looked  a  little  breathless, 
like  one  running  a  race  and  seeing  the  goal  before  him. 

"But  why,"  said  Brisbane,  slowly,  hi  his  manner  of 
always  asking  why  and  cogitating  profoundly  on  the 
conclusion  he  meant  to  make  when  the  data  were  all 
in,  "if  Brainerd's  so  unpopular — if  he  can't  make  his 
pile  like  Jerry  here,  if  he  can't  rake  in  kudos,  if  the 
judicious  grieve  and  the  ribald  laugh — why  are  they 
all  imitating  him?" 

"Because  they  don't  know  they  are  imitating  him," 
said  Glendon  Springs,  eagerly,  as  if  he  had  made  the 
best  of  discoveries.  "They've  caught  it." 


120  VANISHING  POINTS 

"You  don't  know  you've  got  typhoid  till  the  germ 
develops  and  the  doctor  tells  you  so,"  said  the  red- 
haired  man. 

"Oh,  no,  they  don't  know  it." 

"Well,  why  are  they  praised?  Why  do  they  make 
money?"  Stillman  offered  slowly,  as  if  the  answer  were 
of  the  greatest  importance  and  he  was  trying  their 
pulse  and  noting  every  beat,  "when  he's  so  far  from 
any  sort  of  worldly  stunt?" 

"Because  they've  translated  it  into  the  language 
the  market  understands,"  said  Glendon  Springs.  He 
answered  quietly,  but  his  eyes  shone.  "He's  dug  out 
the  gold.  They've  minted  it.  They've  put  it  into 
circulation." 

"I  shouldn't  say  his  was  the  virgin  gold,  the  ingot," 
said  Brisbane.  "I  should  say  Brainerd  had  put  it  into 
a  statue — into  a  whole  gallery  of  statues — and  nobody's 
rich  enough  to  buy  such  statuary.  Nobody's  got  the 
eye  to  want  it,  maybe,  or  the  great  gallery  to  put  it  in." 

"If  we're  going  to  talk  in  figures,"  said  Jerry,  "I'll 
have  a  hack  at  it  and  say,  if  his  statues  are  gold,  the 
rest  of  us  have  made  ours  out  of  base  metal.  But  they 
sell.  Don't  forget  my  steamer  ticket  pinned  to  that 
cushion.  They  sell." 

"There  seems  to  be  the  biggest  sort  of  injustice  in 
that,"  said  Brisbane.  "Is  Brainerd  going  to  die  the 
death  of  the  failure  while  little  folks  like  our  Jerry  here 
go  down  to  posterity?" 

"Oh,  posterity!"  the  red-haired  man  flung  in,  "pos- 
terity! that's  another  pair  of  sleeves.  If  you  talk  about 
posterity — " 

"When  you  go  into  a  picture-gallery  Over  There," 


THE  MASTER  121 

said  Stillman,  indicating  the  continent  of  Europe 
with  a  generous  sweep  of  his  thumb,  "how  much 
time  do  you  spend  on  the  pictures  labelled  '  School 
of  Raphael/  'School  of  Perugino'?" 

"Yes,"  said  Jerry,  sunnily,  "tell  us,  you  fellows, 
that  have  made  the  grand  tour.  I  want  to  know,  so 
I  can  remember  what  to  do  myself." 

"Don't  you,"  said  Stillman,  with  an  unmoved 
gravity,  "turn  to  Raphael  and  Perugino  themselves?" 

The  red-haired  man  was  leaning  over  the  table  and 
scowling  at  Stillman,  but,  it  seemed,  in  pure  curiosity 
and  the  effort  of  thought. 

"Well,  then,"  said  he,  hi  a  burst  of  appeal,  "will 
you  tell  me  why  in  thunder  Brainerd  takes  such  a  lot 
of  reading  to  get  at  what  he's  going  to  say?" 

Stillman  seemed  to  feel  that  this  was  the  moment 
for  a  direct  statement  he  had  never  made  before. 

"Because  he's  got  more  to  say  than  anybody  else." 

"What's  he  wrap  it  round  for  in  so  many  coils? 
What's  he  weave  it  so  fine  for,  too  fine  for  the  naked 
eye?" 

"Count  the  threads  in  the  widest  tapestry  ever  made/ 
said  Stillman,  "the  tapestry  crowded  with  the  biggest 
figures.  You'll  find  they're  multitudinous.  Then 
pick  up  the  old  cushion  at  home,  the  one  on  the  rocking- 
chair  in  great-aunt's  parlor.  Got  a  watch-dog  on  it, 
or  maybe  a  stag's  head.  Count  your  threads  there. 
Any  child  could  do  it." 

Every  man  looked  at  his  plate  or  studied  the  face 
of  his  opposite  neighbor,  absorbed  like  his  own.  The 
red-haired  man  broke  the  stillness. 

"Well,"  said  he,  "I  gather  that  the  sense  of  the 


122  VANISHING  POINTS 

meeting  points  to  the  idea  that  Brainerd's  misunder- 
stood, not  appreciated. " 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Stillman,  "not  that.  Only  referred — 
he  wouldn't  appeal  himself,  but  some  of  us  can  appeal 
for  him — to  the  higher  tribunal." 

"What's  that,  Stillman?"  Brisbane  asked. 

"The  future."  After  a  moment,  Stillman  went  on. 
A  light  had  broken  out  upon  his  face,  and  he  talked 
eagerly  as  one  who  had  something  of  incredible  value 
to  share  with  them.  "Why,  don't  you  see  what  you've 
said  here  to-night?  You've  owned  Brainerd  works 
a  spell  you  can't  escape.  You  scoff  at  his  style,  but 
you  tear  off  samples  from  it  and  go  and  have  waist- 
coats made  of  it  as  much  like  it  as  you  can  manage. 
Why,  boys,  he's  our  master." 

It  was  by  one  impulse,  it  seemed,  that  they  were  on 
their  feet.  Jerry,  perhaps,  it  was  who  led — Jerry, 
whose  dinner  this  had  been,  and  who  had  seen  it  con- 
verted into  a  ceremonial  before  an  actual  shrine.  He 
at  any  rate  proposed  the  toast:  "The  Master." 

They  drank  it  in  silence.  No  such  meeting  of  the 
Tribunal  had  seen  them  so  moved,  all  of  them  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  way.  Something  hi  the  talk,  the 
recurrence  to  ineffable  ideals,  the  martyrdom  of  ob- 
scurity decreed  to  genius  in  its  lifetime,  appealed  to 
that  old  self  each  man  had  believed  in,  at  one  stage, 
as  his  own  indubitable  possession,  seeing  it  pierce  the 
darkness  of  contemporary  dulness  like  a  star.  For  a 
moment  it  seemed  possible  to  attain,  not  the  world's 
suffrages,  but  a  foothold  on  that  steep  where  climbing 
is  its  own  present  reward.  Chairs  were  pushed  back 
then,  and  the  meeting  was  understood  to  be  over.  No 


THE  MASTER  123 

man  felt  like  dropping  into  the  familiarity  of  an  in- 
formal conclave  as  it  had  been  on  other  nights.  But 
Stillman's  voice  recalled  them. 

"Brainerd  is  here  hi  town.  Shall  I  tell  him  we — well, 
I'll  tell  him  we  drank  to  him,  at  least." 

His  eyes  sought  Brisbane's  with  perhaps  a  suggestion 
in  them,  almost  a  prayer,  and  Brisbane  leaned  over 
and  lifted  the  laurel  wreath  in  both  his  hands. 

"Take  him" — he  halted  for  the  confirmation  he 
did  not  need,  and  challenged  the  other  acquiescent 
faces — "take  him,  this." 


THE  INTERPRETER 

THE  city  was  gasping  under  a  moist,  intolerable 
heat.     The  general  mind  was  given  over  to 
temperature  and  that  overworked  term  hu- 
midity, dwelling  at  last,  with  enfeebled  but  inborn 
necessity,  on  a  consideration  of  dear  Me,  that  now 
seemed  held  in  the  balance,  to  be  clung  to  blindly  until 
the  springing  of  a  breeze. 

Nina  Castro  languished  on  a  wicker  couch,  with 
cool  drinks  at  hand,  and  a  maid  to  fan  her  and  divine 
new  wants.  The  couch  had  been  demanded  when  the 
temperature  ran  up,  and  was  as  hastily  produced  by  a 
hotel  management  bound  to  propitiate  a  star  so  cogni- 
zant of  her  rights.  Half  the  blind  had  been  left  cleverly 
open,  so  that  a  sun-shaft,  obliquely  thrown,  accented 
her  yellow  hah-  and  brightened  her  white  dress.  The 
maid  tiptoed  about  with  a  solemn  and  ostentatious 
zeal,  and  the  secretary,  a  hardheaded  young  person, 
who  knew  Nina  through  and  through,  and  had  no 
opinion  of  her,  half  in  satirical  policy  preserved  the 
same  expectant  attitude  at  the  desk  where  she  awaited 
orders.  The  maid  and  the  secretary  and  the  actress 
were  all  acting,  each  hi  her  degree.  There  was  a  knock 
at  the  door,  and  the  maid  fled  to  meet  it  in  a  horrified 
haste,  testifying  to  the  profanity  of  invading  lightly  a 
shrine  like  this.  She  came  back  bearing  a  card,  and  the 
actress  took  it  in  a  languid  hand.  But  instantly  a 

124 


THE  INTERPRETER  125 

thrill  ran  through  her.  She  rose,  with  a  charming  sweep 
of  draperies,  and  spoke  in  the  voice  trained  so  untiringly 
to  the  curves  of  beauty  that  now  its  artifice  simulated 
all  the  freedom  of  nature: 

"Send  him  up.  Miss  Melcher,  you  may  go." 
Miss  Melcher  bestirred  herself  with  a  careful  cour- 
tesy, and  placed  her  pen  and  paper  in  order  on  the  desk. 
After  that  was  done,  she  paused  a  moment  before 
leaving,  and  considered  Nina's  beautiful  back,  as  the 
actress  stood,  in  a  trance  of  some  emotion  or  its  counter- 
feit, still  musing  over  the  card.  Miss  Melcher's  look 
was  an  illuminating  commentary  on  the  woman  she 
had  served  for  many  years — contempt  for  the  beautiful 
back  and  envy  of  it,  a  bitter  worship  of  charms  not  her 
own  and  the  clear-sighted  scorn,  instinct  with  sex  itself, 
of  cheap  goods  not  yet  marked  down  by  Time.  Then, 
as  Nina  turned,  with  a  little  frown  and  a  recalled  at- 
tention, Miss  Melcher  gave  the  desk  another  hasty 
touch  and  slipped  out  of  the  room.  The  man  was 
entering.  Miss  Melcher  threw  him  a  comprehensive, 
half  satirical  look  in  passing,  as  if  to  say:  " You're  here 
again.  You  haven't  changed.  No  more  has  she." 

He  recognized  her  as  an  unconsidered  personality 
he  had  been  used  to  before  his  three  months'  absence 
in  Europe,  and  held  out  his  hand.  But  the  girl  ap- 
parently failed  to  see  it,  and  immediately  he  was  in 
the  room,  before  the  dangerous  reefs  of  Nina's  beauty 
and  her  unsparingly  administered  charm.  His  eyes 
rested  upon  her  in  a  half  unwilling  pleasure,  as  hers 
sought  him  sweetly  with  no  withdrawal  in  them.  She 
extended  both  her  hands,  and  he  took  them.  She 
brightened  more  and  more.  To  her  mind,  he  had  not 


126  VANISHING  POINTS 

changed.  He  was  still  handsome,  incalculably  virile — 
and  hers.  How  worn  he  had  been  growing  in  the  last 
years,  how  dulled  his  eyes  were  now  from  some  flagging 
of  the  spirit,  she  did  not  see. 

" Tired?"  she  asked  him  fondly,  leading  him  to  a 
chair,  and  he  remembered,  with  his  old  amused  com- 
mentary on  her,  that  this  was  the  full-throated  voice 
she  had  built  up  from  crude  beginnings  and  used  now 
too  indiscriminately. 

"No,"  he  said,  "we  had  a  smooth  passage.  Not  a 
ripple.  I  slept  most  of  the  time.  How  are  you?" 

He  threw  into  his  tone  the  caressing  anxiety  she 
challenged  and,  in  one  form  or  another,  always  re- 
ceived. She  had  sunk  again  on  the  couch,  and  crossed 
her  feet  with  an  unerring  grace.  Her  face  became  a 
page  of  sweet  contradictions  where  the  brows  frowned 
while  the  mouth  was  smiling.  She  answered  gently, 
with  a  childlike  pettishness  calculated  to  augment  the 
charm. 

'I  am  worn  to  the  bone,  dear,  simply  worn  to  the 
bone.  The  new  play  won't  go." 

"Seems  to  me  I've  heard  that  before,  or  something 
like  it!" 

She  shook  her  head. 

"No,"  she  denied,  "nothing  so  bad  as  this.  It's  a 
flat  failure.  I  haven't  even  rehearsed  it." 

"It's  Mary  Gale's,  isn't  it?" 

"Yes.  I  had  great  faith  in  her.  But  she  can't  do  it. 
She's  no  good." 

"Told  her  so?" 

"Yes.    I  told  her  yesterday." 

"How  did  she  take  it?" 


THE  INTERPRETER  127 

"Take  it?  Why,  I  don't  know.  How  should  she 
take  it?" 

He  looked  at  her  for  a  moment,  still  smiling  in  a 
way  destined  always  to  arouse  in  her  a  vague  discom- 
fort. It  suggested  pastures  where  she  never  fed. 

"You  know,"  he  explained,  "I  used  to  see  Mary 
Gale  when  I  was  a  boy.  We  went  to  school  together." 

"Yes,  you  said  so.  But  let's  not  talk  of  her.  I've 
lost  tune  over  it,  and  I'm  disappointed.  That's  all 
there  is  about  it." 

"Have  you  a  copy  of  it?" 

She  laughed. 

"Forty  thousand  in  that  desk.  We've  gone  over  it 
until — stale!  Well,  I  should  think  so.  The  lines  don't 
mean  any  more  to  me  now  than  so  much  Esperanto.  I 
ought  to  have  Melcher  pack  these  up  and  send  them  to 
her.  I  don't  want  them." 

He  rose  and  went  over  to  the  desk. 

"I'll  take  them,"  he  said.  "I'll  see  that  she  has 
them." 

"You  can't  do  one  blessed  thing  with  it,"  she  warned 
him.  "It's  awfully  sweet  of  you — but  the  thing's  no 
good.  I  might  have  seen  it  sooner,  and  saved  my 
pains." 

He  was  quietly  pulling  out  neat  acts  of  typewritten 
manuscript,  and  arranging  them  in  a  pile  on  the  desk. 
Then  he  placed  his  gloves  upon  it,  as  if  to  fix  his  claim. 

"I  suppose  you  told  her  your  part  didn't  suit  you?" 
he  said  incidentally,  returning  to  his  seat. 

"Yes,  that  was  it.    It  didn't  suit  me.    Not  a  bit." 

"You  told  her  she  had  great  emotional  power,  but 
she  must  learn  construction." 


'128  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Yes." 

"Then  you  said  play-writing  and  book-writing  were 
two  entirely  different  matters.  In  the  play,  there  must 
be  no  mystery  for  the  audience.  In  a  book  the  mystery 
must  be  preserved.  In  a  play,  every  line  must  count. 
In  a  book,  you  may  digress,  explain.  Didn't  you  tell 
her  that?" 

"Why,  yes!  but  what's  the  use  now,  when  I've 
found  she  can't  do  it?" 

"You  told  her  to  observe  the  effects  you  got  in  'The 
Lost  Fiddler',  and  asked  her  if  she  couldn't  learn  some- 
thing from  that.  Now  didn't  you?  " 

"How  do  you  know?"  she  asked,  again  wrinkling 
her  brows  delightfully. 

"Bless  you,  child,  it's  what  you  said  to  me,  seven 
years  ago,  when  I  went  to  you  with  my  first  play.  It's 
what  you  all  say.  You  learn  it  from  one  another.  It's 
your  form  of  polite  farewell.  Half  the  time  you  don't 
know  what  you  mean  by  it.  You  never  happen  to 
think,  any  of  you,  that  the  poor  devils  of  authors  may 
know  all  those  platitudes,  pat  as  print.  They  can't 
do  the  trick,  but  aphorisms  won't  make  them  any 
for'arder.  What's  the  use  of  saying  to  a  man  with  no 
legs,  'My  dear  fellow,  in  walking  one  uses  legs.'  He 
knows  that  as  well  as  you  do.  That's  where  the  shoe 
pinches." 

"I  don't  believe  I  said  those  things  to  you,"  she  ob- 
jected, with  that  fascinating  good-nature  which  is  one 
step  toward  supremacy,  when  the  way  is  lost.  "I 
recognized  you  from  the  first." 

"You  did!"  He  lost  his  tired  look  and  roared  with 
ironic  laughter.  "I  should  rather  say  you  did.  You 


THE  INTERPRETER  129 

kept  me  hanging  round  for  other  purposes;  but  recog- 
nized my — "  Then  he  sobered.  "My  dear  child," 
he  said,  "it  was  all  a  lucky  fluke.  You  didn't  recognize 
me.  Somehow  I  clambered  on,  and  when  the  house 
got  a  laugh  out  of  me,  I  stayed.  But  111  see  that  Mary 
Gale  has  these  things.  Pardon  me."  He  was  looking 
at  his  watch. 

"No!  no!  you'll  stay  to  luncheon.  Then  we'll  drive 
out  into  the  country,  and  do  something  this  evening." 

"I've  got—  "  he  hesitated,  and  ended  gravely,  "I've 
got  to  run  down  to  Doctor  Tarbell's." 

"What!"  The  frown  meant  heavy  weather.  She 
sat  up,  and  there  were  lightnings  on  her  brow.  "She 
doesn't  know  you  are  home?"  she  suggested,  in  a  de- 
termined quiet. 

"No,"  he  answered,  "but  I  am  home." 

"Have  you  been  writing  to  her?" 

"Yes." 

"Once  a  week?" 

"Twice." 

She  mused  a  moment,  her  delicate  hands  trembling 
in  her  lap.  Then  she  rose,  and  with  a  little  soft  rush, 
sank  at  his  feet  and  laid  the  hands  upon  his.  She  looked 
up  at  him  movingly. 

"Sidney,"  she  said,  in  a  broken  voice,  one  he  knew 
also  from  the  stage,  "why  aren't  you  sensible?  Why 
aren't  you  firm?" 

He  was  looking  down  at  her  in  a  grave  kindliness,  as 
at  a  child  who  expects  too  much,  and  yet  must  not  be 
disappointed. 

"Perhaps  I'm  too  firm,  Nina,"  he  said.  "Perhaps 
that's  what  you  don't  like." 


130  VANISHING  POINTS 

"It  means  either  one  thing  or  the  other.  Either  you 
are  fond  of  her,  or  you  are  not.  She's  half  out  of  her 
mind.  She  has  been  for  years.  Doesn't  that  release 
you  from  her?" 

He  stroked  her  hands  tenderly. 

"I  rather  think  I  must  go,  Nina,"  he  said. 

She  bent  her  head  and  cried  a  few  silent  tears.  Sud- 
denly she  began  laughing  through  them. 

"She  ought  to  know  this,  too, "  she  interjected. 

"Who?" 

"Mary  Gale.  She  thinks  you're  a  hero.  She  gave  you 
the  leading  part  in  the  play." 

"Your  play?" 

"Yes.  I  had  to  keep  cutting  you  out."  She  rose, 
with  the  suppleness  of  her  craft,  and  went  back  to  her 
seat,  giving  herself,  when  she  got  there,  little  reestab- 
lishing touches — patting  her  hair  with  a  pretty  grace, 
and  pressing  her  handkerchief  to  her  eyes  with  the  art 
that  aids  without  havoc. 

"What  do  you  mean,  Nina?  What  has  Mary  Gale 
done?" 

"Why,  the  man  in  the  play  was  an  all-round  angel. 
I  told  her  he'd  have  to  be  cut,  and  she  said  he  made 
the  play.  That's  all  she  knew." 

"But  what  about  him?" 

"Why,  he  was  meant  for  you.  She  owned  it — said 
she'd  followed  your  career  for  years.  Said  she  knew 
about  you  from  old  friends  of  you  both,  and  they  told 
her  about  it,  about  your  faithfulness  to — your  wife." 
A  quick  breath  came  with  the  word,  as  if  she  felt  re- 
pugnance to  it. 

Sidney  was  not  looking  at  her. 


THE  INTERPRETER  131 

"Well,"  he  said  at  last,  "that's  odd.  And  it's  doubly 
odd  it  should  come  now." 

"Why?" 

He  turned  to  her  then  with  the  air  of  making  an 
intemperate  confession  to  which  she  had  a  claim. 

"You  mustn't  use  it  against  me,  Nina.  You  mustn't 
remind  me  of  it  when  I  feel  another  way.  But  it's  true 
that  I've  had  moments,  especially  coming  home  on  the 
steamer,  when  I've  wondered  whether  you  mightn't  be 
right." 

"Yes!"  She  bent  forward  now  in  a  restrained  eager- 
ness, hands  clasped  on  her  knees,  her  eyes  blazing. 

He  spoke  with  difficulty,  aiming  at  absolute  fairness 
and  at  the  same  time  painstakingly  translating  his 
habit  of  thought  into  hers. 

"I  found  I  had  to  mull  over  it  all  the  tune  on  the 
boat.  It  had  made  a  break,  going  away.  Coming  home 
would  be  starting  over  again,  so  to  speak.  For  the 
first  time  I  wondered  whether  I  should  start  in  another 
fashion." 

"Yes,"  she  breathed.    "Yes,  Sidney,  yes." 

"I've  wondered — I  wonder,  too — "  he  broke  his 
speech  with  a  little  bitter  laugh — "I  wonder,  too,  if 
I'm  a  cad  for  saying  it — whether  you  are  right  and  I 
have  taken  needless — pains." 

"It's  only — "  she  spoke  in  a  full,  sweet  voice,  with 
that  indescribable  nobility  of  mien  which  was  also,  he 
recognized,  a  part  of  her  outfit,  "it's  only,  Sidney,  the 
effect  on  you.  It  drains  you.  Don't  you  see  it  does?" 
He  was  not  listening,  save  apparently  to  his  own  inner 
voice.  "Your  work,  too,"  she  breathed.  "If  you  were 
free,  you'd  be  another  man." 


132  VANISHING  POINTS 

Now  he  got  up  and  looked  for  his  hat  in  a  vague 
way  he  had  when  he  was  thinking,  and  Nina  also  arose. 
She  confronted  him,  superb  and  challenging.  "Well?" 
she  said. 

He  recalled  himself  with  a  start. 

"I'll  come  in  to-morrow/'  he  promised,  adding 
winningly,  with  the  smile  that  always  earned  him 
pardon,  "shall  I?" 

"Not  this  afternoon?" 

"No,  dear,  not  this  afternoon." 

A  flush  came  to  her  cheeks.    Her  eyes  grew  dark. 

"Sidney,"  she  said,  "you  deserve  to  be  told  to  come 
this  afternoon  or — "  unfailing  tact  forbade  her  to  go 
on. 

He  was  looking  at  her  seriously. 

"  Nina,"  he  said,  "  I  don't  please  you,  do  I?  " 

She  answered  quickly. 

"You  please  me  when  you — please  me!" 

He  laughed  a  little,  and  at  that  her  eyebrows  began 
to  go  up  whimsically.  He  put  out  both  hands. 

"Come,  Nina,"  he  entreated,  "be  friends  with  me." 

At  the  moment  of  laying  her  hands  in  his,  she  snatched 
them  back  and  raised  them  to  his  shoulders.  There 
she  held  them  while  she  talked  rapidly  into  his  face. 

"She's  half  insane,  Sidney.  You  know  it.  She 
doesn't  miss  you.  She  can't.  The  doctors  say  so. 
You've  been  gone  long  enough  for  her  to  forget  all 
about  you.  Now  you  mean  to  go  down  there  and  re- 
mind her  again.  I  wouldn't  say  a  word  if  it  did  her  any 
good;  but  it  only  takes  it  out  of  you.  You  know  that. 
O  Sidney,  give  it  up!  Give  it  up,  dear — please." 

He  was  bending  toward  her  vivid  face,  the  flush 


THE  INTERPRETER  133 

upon  it,  the  eyes  wet  with  tears,  when  she  laughed,  in 
a  bubble  of  coming  triumph. 

"Mary  Gale  said  you  were  a  hero.  Be  a  hero,  if 
you  want  to,  but  don't  be  this  kind.  Rule  things. 
Don't  let  them  rule  you." 

He  raised  his  head,  with  an  air  of  hearing  a  recall. 

"Mary  Gale!"  he  echoed.  "Well,  let's  see  what 
Mary  Gale's  got  to  say  on  the  subject.  I'll  read  the 
play." 

Her  hands  slipped  from  his  shoulders,  but  he  took 
them,  with  a  quick  pressure,  and  let  them  go  again. 
"I'm  sorry  I  bother  you,"  he  said  honestly.  "Let  me 
come  round  to-morrow."  When  he  reached  the  door, 
she  was  still  looking  at  him  silently,  what  judgments 
forming  behind  the  jewels  of  her  eyes  he  could  not  guess. 
But  he  had  been  accustomed  to  ignore  the  cruder  ele- 
ments in  her,  and  now  he  nodded,  in  a  frank  goodf  ellow- 
ship,  and  went  out. 

That  night,  after  his  two  hours  at  Dr.  Tarbell's,  he 
took  dinner  in  his  own  room,  and  then  drew  a  chair  to 
the  window,  to  read  Mary  Gale's  play.  A  little  kind 
wind  had  crept  in  from  the  east  and  was  cooling  the 
city.  It  touched  his  face,  and  he  was  grateful  to  it. 
He  would  not  think  of  the  afternoon  yet,  or  the  choice 
it  had  gravely  offered  him,  and,  rather  to  defer  debate 
he  opened  the  first  act  and  began  to  read.  He  read 
carefully,  and  presently  with  a  flush  upon  his  forehead 
and  the  knitted  brows  of  sharp  consideration.  He  fin- 
ished the  act,  the  play,  and  then,  before  the  summer 
light  had  failed,  went  back  to  read  it  here  and  there 
again.  At  last  he  put  the  acts  together,  got  his  hat, 
and  ran  downstairs.  There  he  called  a  hansom  and 


134  VANISHING  POINTS 

ordered  the  man  to  drive  him  to  the  address  penciled 
on  a  corner  of  the  manuscript. 

It  was  a  dull  street,  with  dressmaking  advertised  on 
windows  old  in  dust.  Women,  in  brazen  challenge 
to  the  breeze,  were  sitting  upon  doorsteps,  exchanging 
summer  repartee  with  coatless  men,  and  down  the 
street  a  group  of  ragged  children  danced  happily  to  a 
hurdy-gurdy,  and  passed  an  adored  and  lessening  bit 
of  ice  from  hand  to  hand.  A  panting  maid,  summoned 
by  his  ring  from  some  ashy  depth,  bade  him  "go  right 
up",  and  when  he  hesitatingly  complied,  he  found 
Mary  Gale,  warned  by  another  bell  from  below,  stand- 
ing in  the  attic  hall.  He  knew  her  at  once,  the  gaunt, 
clean  look,  the  good  gray  eyes  and  general  testimony 
to  shyness  and  New  England  virtues,  the  way  of  wear- 
ing her  dull  clothes  as  if  they  were  for  use,  not  plumage, 
and  as  if  no  one  had  ever  praised  her  for  them.  She 
was  overwhelmed  at  seeing  him.  That  was  plain  at 
once. 

"Why!"  she  said,  and  then  seemed  lost  in  the  depth 
of  her  own  wonder.  ' '  Why ! ' ' 

He  had  reached  the  top  stair  and  given  her  his 
hand. 

"Hello,  Mary!"  he  remarked,  in  the  language  of 
their  school  days.  "Awfully  glad  to  find  you." 

Flushed  with  a  kind  of  rapturous  recognition,  she 
led  him  in  and  established  him  in  a  rocking  chair  under 
her  one  dormer  window. 

"I  never  expected  such  a  thing,"  she  declared,  and 
then  he  understood  that  she  really  thought  him  a  good 
deal  of  a  personage.  It  amused  him,  but  it  touched  him 
also. 


THE  INTERPRETER  135 

"It's  only  queer  I  haven't  looked  you  up  before/'  he 
said.  "I  know  your  work." 

Mary  shook  her  head  and  laughed. 

"Not  all  of  it,"  she  demurred.  "You've  seen  the 
stories — not  my  fashion  notes,  and  my  current  items, 
and  my  pearls  of  thought." 

"Is  it  as  bad  as  that,  Mary?"  he  asked,  with  a 
solemnity  she  loved. 

"Worse,"  she  laughed  back  at  him.  "I  edit  the 
Girls'  Letter-Box. "  Her  eyes  had  fallen  on  the  manu- 
script in  his  hand,  and  he  noted  the  quick  change  in 
her.  It  was  pathetically  compounded  of  hope  and 
terror.  The  play  might  have  been  an  old  misery 
she  had  fought  so  long  that  she  expected  it  at 
every  turning.  uWhy,"  she  faltered,  "how  did 
you—?" 

"How  did  I  come  across  this?  Miss  Castro  entrusted 
me  with  it." 

"I  never  wanted  to  see  it  again,"  she  burst  forth, 
eying  it  as  if,  having  done  strange  things  to  hurt  her, 
it  might  unexpectedly  do  more. 

He  laid  it  down  on  the  little  table,  and  there  was 
silence  between  them  of  the  sort  that  preludes  candor. 
He  wished  she  would  ask  him  what  he  thought  of  the 
play.  She  was  hoping  he  would  tell  her. 

"Want  to  do  it  awfully,  Mary?"  he  was  asking,  in 
his  kindest  tone. 

"What?" 

"Write  a  play." 

"You  know  I  do.  Don't  we,  all  of  us?  I  don't 
know  whether  it's  the  money — no,  it  isn't.  It's  creating 
life,  and  seeing  it  breathe  and  walk.  Well?"  She 


136  VANISHING  POINTS 

looked  at  him  a  moment,  and  ventured  breathlessly: 
"You  don't  believe  Fve  got  it  in  me!" 

He  touched  the  manuscript  with  a  gentle  finger. 

"  It  isn't  in  this,  Mary." 

Something  faded  out  of  her  face. 

"It's  queer,  isn't  it?"  she  mused.  "I  took  the 
biggest  story  I  knew.  I  knew  it,  mind  you.  I  didn't 
imagine  it  and  hang  garlands  on  it.  I  had  watched  it 
growing.  The  man  was  a  hero,  the  only  hero  I've  seen. 
To  be  sure,  I  had  to  make  him  subservient  to  her — that 
foolish  woman." 

"She  isn't  foolish,  Mary,"  he  reminded  her.  "She's 
very  charming — after  her  own  kind." 

"I  dare  say.  She  seemed  foolish  to  me,  the  more  I 
saw  of  her.  I  don't  care  much  for  exotics.  I  like  to 
find  a  good,  wholesome  weed  even,  growing  out  of  a 
crack  and  nourishing  itself  on  air,  and  still  grow- 
ing." 

He  spoke  in  a  low  tone. 

"That  was  the  way  your  hero  seemed  to  you?" 

"Just  the  way.  It  seemed  to  me  he  fed  on  nothing 
and  still  grew  tall.  Oh,  what  a  funny  world  it  is!" 
She  threw  herself  back  in  a  little  gale  of  laughter,  and 
her  eyes  were  wet.  "I  suppose  if  I  told  you  how  my 
hero  looked  to  me,  you'd  never  recognize  him.  You'd 
never  think  you'd  seen  him  even." 

"Maybe  not,  Mary."  He  had  a  hungry  desire  to 
urge  her  on.  He  was  even  willing  to  entrap  her.  She 
seemed  to  be  illuminating  page  after  page  of  his  life, 
with  a  rapid  brush. 

"Fancy,"  she  said,  "a  man  that  might  have  been 
spoiled  by  praise,  and  yet  worked  on,  doing  the  same 


THE  INTERPRETER  137 

sweet,  sane  things  he  began  by  doing — a  man  that 
might  have  had  the  blare  of  trumpets  announcing  him 
all  the  time,  and  scorned  them.  No,  he  didn't  even 
scorn  them.  He  never  seemed  to  hear.  He  was  too 
busy  being  faithful  to  the  old  humble  ties  of  his  life. 
Some  candles  go  out,  you  know,  some  we  depend  on 
to  light  us  along  to  bed.  He  never  seemed  to  flicker 


even." 


The  warmth  had  come  into  his  face,  and  his  eyes 
were  lustrous. 

" Nevertheless/ '  he  warned  her,  "that  isn't  neces- 
sarily drama." 

"I  suppose  it  isn't.  I'd  got  so  used  to  seeing  it 
march  in  my  own  mind,  I  fancied  it  would  move  of 
itself  anywhere.  But  that  woman!  She's  as  thin  as 
an  eggshell.  I  bungled  it.  She  spoiled  it.  I  can't  do 
anything  for  her.  Maybe  I  couldn't  anyway." 

"It's  a  tough  job,"  he  said,  feeling  about  for  phrases. 

Mary's  eyes  brimmed  with  laughing  tears. 

"Now,  don't  tell  me  it's  a  separate  art,"  she  said, 
"and  that  it's  got  to  be  concentrated,  and  there  mustn't 
be  a  word  too  much,  and " 

"Have  they  said  all  that  to  you?" 

"Law,  chile,  yes!  over  and  over!  There  must  be  an 
actor's  commonplace  book,  like  the  key  to  the  arith- 
metic. Well,  never  mind.  I  had  one  beautiful  story, 
and  I've  written  it  and  that's  the  end  of  it." 

"I'm  not  sure  that  it's  the  end  of  it,"  said  Sidney  sud- 
denly, in  a  sharp  assertiveness  that  made  her  wonder. 
"Mary,  when  have  you  seen  her?  " 

"Your  wife?" 

"Yes.    You  knew  her  pretty  well." 


138  VANISHING  POINTS 

"  She  was  in  the  class  below/7  said  Mary.  She  looked 
away  from  him  briefly,  and  flushed  a  little,  speaking. 
"I  saw  her  while  you  were  abroad." 

He  bent  keen  eyes  upon  her. 

"What  made  you  do  that?" 

She  hesitated. 

"I  knew  you  had  to  be  away,"  she  said  at  last.  "I 
knew  you  had  arranged  every  thing  perfectly,  but  yet 
it  seemed  as  if  somebody  ought  to  look  in,  hi  your 
place,  and  keep  an  eye  on  her." 

"So  I've  had  a  friend  I  never  thought  of!  That  was 
mighty  good  of  you." 

"No,"  she  said  frankly,  "it  was  gratitude.  You've 
meant  a  lot  to  me,  right  along.  You've  been  a  sort  of 
beacon.  And  when  you  couldn't  be  on  the  spot — well, 
your  care  of  her  has  been  something  so  wonderful  it 
seems  as  if  we  all  ought  to  stand  by  and  help  a 
little*" 

He  thrust  his  hands  into  his  pockets,  and  sat  there 
a  moment,  musing. 

"She  was  glad  to  see  me  to-day,"  he  said,  irrelevantly. 

"Yes,"  answered  Mary. 

"She — "  Until  now  he  had  not  spoken  voluntarily 
of  his  wife  to  any  one  except  the  doctors  and  nurses 
who  had  charge  of  her.  The  unaccustomed  relief  made 
him  assert  almost  with  an  eager  passion:  "She's  really 
different,  Mary.  They  all  say  so.  She  was  glad  to 
see  me.  She  was  quite  herself." 

"It's  beautiful,"  said  Mary. 

"There's  one  thing—"  he  hesitated.  "I  believe  I'll 
tell  you.  Tarbell  thinks  I  might  take  her  away — just 
she  and  I — to  the  sea,  perhaps,  and  find  out  how  it 


THE  INTERPRETER  139 

works.  She  doesn't  know  about  it.  I  didn't  want  her 
to  know  until  it's  decided." 

" Until  Doctor  Tarbell  decides?" 

"Until  I  decide." 

"Oh!"  Then  she  said  tentatively,  "I  suppose  it 
would  be  wonderful  to  her." 

' '  I  suppose  it  would. ' '  He  spoke  in  a  heavy  brooding. 
"Really,  Mary,  I  did  get  the  idea,  as  I  was  talking 
with  her — he  had  told  me  before  I  saw  her — that  she 
would  be  quite  wild  with  happiness.  And  in  a  good 
way,  too,  a  good,  wholesome  way." 

Mary  was  smiling  at  him. 

"That  settles  it,"  she  said. 

"No,"  he  owned,  "it  didn't  settle  it  then.  Some- 
thing has  settled  it  since.  At  first  I  was  afraid.  Not 
of  her,  of  course.  She  has  never  been  violent.  But  of 
the  outcome." 

She  was  smiling  now,  in  a  skepticism  half  scorn. 

"Oh,  no,"  she  said,  "you're  not  afraid.  You  couldn't 
be." 

He  had  got  upon  his  feet. 

"Yes,  I  could,  Mary,"  he  said  lightly.  "But  I'm 
not  afraid  now,'  at  any  rate.  Yes,  I  think  we'll  do  it. 
I'll  look  out  some  little  place,  and  we'll  go  there  with 
that  good  maid  of  hers  and  see  what  comes  of  it.  Good- 
by,  Mary.  You're  a  dear." 

She  stood  at  the  stair-head  and  watched  him 
down.  He  knew  what  thoughts  were  following 
him. 

He  walked  home  by  roundabout  ways  that  took  him 
past  Nina's  hotel.  Under  her  window  he  halted  a 
moment,  listening  to  the  trained  sweetness  of  her  voice 


140  VANISHING  POINTS 

crowning  the  perfection  of  a  song.  Other  voices  rose  in 
commendation  and  light  laughter  when  the  song  had 
ceased.  He  waited  a  moment,  as  if  in  ceremonious 
farewell,  and  then,  taking  off  his  hat  to  the  greatening 
breeze,  walked  quickly  on. 


THE  HANDS  OF  THE  FAITHFUL 

NO,"  he  said  to  the  florist,  " don't  do  them  up. 
I'll  take  them  as  they  are." 
He  walked  out  into  the  May  sunshine  with 
the  pink  roses,  vaguely  feeling  that  they  ought  to  add 
something  to  the  richness  of  the  day.  It  was,  hi  his 
weak  state,  that  of  a  man  just  recovering  from  illness, 
as  if  he  craved  some  stimulant  to  waken  hi  him  a  zest 
for  that  joy  of  life  which  had  for  the  time  escaped  him. 
This,  he  told  himself,  must  be  a  moment  of  great 
happiness.  He  had  met  death  and  been  reprieved, 
he  was  engaged  to  Rose  Cameron,  and  he  was  going 
to  see  her  for  the  first  tune  after  her  return  from  that 
unavoidable  absence  in  Europe,  an  interval  covering 
very  accurately  the  period  of  his  illness.  He  was 
glad  she  had  been  away.  No  comfort  her  presence 
could  have  lent  him  would  have  compensated  for  the 
irritation  of  knowing  she  saw  him  at  his  worst.  At 
forty-six  one  needed  all  the  small  bravery  of  life  to  keep 
him  in  countenance.  Last,  in  reviewing  his  reasons 
for  present  jubilation,  he  was  a  great  author,  a  European 
review  had  lately  told  him,  and  before  his  illness  the 
scene  of  another  novel  had  flamed  before  him,  the  map 
of  a  country  yet  to  be  explored. 

And  after  rehearsing  all  his  pretexts  for  throbbing 
veins  and  high  anticipation,  the  day  still  found  him 
cold. 

141 


142  VANISHING  POINTS 

There  was  one  strange  feature  of  this  walk,  the 
goal  of  his  desire:  step  by  step  went  with  him  the 
memory  of  Anne  De  Lisle,  the  woman  he  had  loved  in 
youth,  and  whose  death  had  not,  so  he  had  felt  for 
years,  left  him  free  to  love  again.  In  that  early  rela- 
tion there  had  been,  as  later  knowledge  tested  it, 
something  pathetically  unfulfilled.  He  had  loved  her, 
but  he  had  loved  himself  more.  His  own  hopes,  his 
prospects,  his  discouragements — those  were  what  they 
had  both  dwelt  on,  and  he  sometimes  wondered,  in  the 
silence  left  by  her  loss,  if  she  had  missed  a  compre- 
hension or  a  tenderness  he  might  have  given.  They 
had  been  absorbed  in  the  book  of  his  life;  but  there  was 
her  book  also  to  read,  and  of  that,  until  her  death, 
he  hardly  turned  a  page.  After  that  blinding  moment, 
it  was  different.  The  pages  then  were  sodden  with 
his  tears.  He  adored  the  memory  of  her,  and  out  of  a 
passionate  ideal  constructed  a  new  loyalty.  She  had 
made  him,  this  absent  woman;  she  had  bent  his  life. 
For  out  of  his  failure  to  her  he  had  awakened  to  a 
poignant  sense  of  the  imperious  rights  of  souls.  Even 
his  work  stood  secondary  to  that.  He  valued  it,  he 
had  great  zest  in  doing  it;  but  always  it  slipped  down 
a  step  in  the  scale  compared  with  human  needs  and 
services.  This  conviction  went  so  far  that  when  his  own 
command  of  the  written  word  seemed  most  precious, 
something  within  him  was  sure  to  rise  and  blast  the 
brave  assurance  in  favor  of  the  great  give  and  take  of 
actual  life.  Though  a  great  author,  he  lacked  the  com- 
fort of  it,  the  bravado  another  man,  not  maimed  by 
failure  at  the  start,  might  have  taken  for  a  cordial. 
The  world,  too,  was  more  his  admirer  than  his  friend. 


THE  HANDS  OF  THE  FAITHFUL  143 

It  had  wearied  of  his  persistent  seclusion,  his  refusal 
to  consider  his  work  more  awe-inspiring  than  that  of 
the  man  who  builds  a  bridge  or  digs  a  garden-bed. 
He  had  weighed  its  platitudes  and  knew,  he  thought, 
how  exactly  its  interest  in  his  intentions  shrank  be- 
side its  vanity  in  exploiting  him.  He  would  have  none 
of  it;  and  so,  having  for  twenty  years  advertised  him- 
self as  a  recluse,  the  world  had  grown  tired  and  had 
run  after  rushlights  that  were  at  least  willing  to  burn. 
Through  all  this  he  and  the  woman  had  seemed  to  be 
living  alone  and  together  working  out  a  daily  task; 
but  when  Rose  Cameron  dawned  upon  him  like  a  sun- 
rise in  her  young  splendor,  he  wondered,  with  a  force 
amounting  to  conviction,  if  he  had  waited  only  for 
that.  The  interval  between  loving  and  loving  again 
seemed,  by  a  fertile  inspiration,  to  be  not  alone  an 
observance  due  the  woman  who  had  gone.  It  was  a 
part  of  a  consistent  faithfulness,  and  in  it  partook  also 
the  woman  who  had  come.  Not  only  had  these  clois- 
tered years  been  given  to  mourning:  they  seemed  now 
a  germinative  pause  before  new  bloom. 

To-day,  as  Anne  De  Lisle  still  paced  beside  him, 
he  pondered  a  little  at  the  still  presence.  He  had  been 
accustomed  to  think  she  came  when  there  were  arduous 
things  to  bear;  but  this  was  joy  before  him.  Yet  she  had 
come  and  he  wondered  with  awe  whether  some  things, 
begun  as  this  was,  had  to  be  eternal.  Then  he  mounted 
the  steps  and  was  directed,  with  a  flattering  haste 
showing  he  was  expected,  up  the  stairs  and  into  the 
library,  where  Rose  awaited  him.  She  was  standing 
by  the  window  where  she  must  have  watched  his 
coming — a  slender  shape  in  white,  her  girl  face  pro- 


144  VANISHING  POINTS 

vocative  of  tender  interest  as  when  he  saw  it  first. 
The  round  contour  of  her  cheek  and  chin,  the  shadow- 
ing of  the  soft  dark  hair,  the  eyes  with  their  frank 
challenge  veiled  by  lavish  fringes, — he  looked  at  her, 
and  forbore  to  speak.  He  had  forgotten,  questioning 
his  own  wasted  face  in  the  mirror,  these  last  months, 
what  youth  was  like.  Between  them  the  roses  were 
laid  on  the  table,  he  had  touched  her  hands  and  found 
them  cold,  and  still,  as  he  remembered  a  moment  after, 
when  they  sat  looking  at  each  other,  he  had  not  kissed 
her.  He  broke  into  his  little  humorous  laugh. 

"  Perhaps  it's  because  you  seem  too  precious,"  he 
said. 

"What?"  she  asked. 

He  leaned  forward  and  laid  a  hand  over  hers  lying 
on  the  table — a  living  model  on  the  dark  wood.  "You 
don't  seem  to  belong  to  me  yet,"  he  added,  in  a  kind 
of  tender  apology.  "I  must  get  used  to  it  again." 

A  great  blush  rose  and  overwhelmed  her,  brow  and 
all.  The  first  thrill  of  life  he  had  known  for  months 
surged  up  responsive,  as  he  felt  his  power  to  move 
her.  She  spoke  with  what  seemed  a  careful  tenderness 
to  match  his  own. 

"You  have  been  very  ill?" 

"Forget  it,"  he  admonished  her,  smiling  at  the  phrase. 
"I  mean  to." 

She  raised  her  brows  in  a  pretty  begging  for  indul- 
gence. 

"I  couldn't  come.    You  knew  that." 

"Indeed  I  did,"  he  answered  heartily.  "And  it 
was  better  not.  I  didn't  know  I  had  so  much  vanity; 
but  I'm  afraid  I  couldn't  have  stood  seeing  you — or 


THE  HANDS  OF  THE  FAITHFUL  145 

having  you  see  me — while  I  was  being  oiled  up  to  run 
again." 

"That's  not  right,"  she  said,  gently,  adding  with  an 
anxious  note  he  liked:  "But  you  are  running  again?" 

"Oh  yes!  Walking,  rather."  Then  he  said  more 
gravely,  with  a  wistful  tenderness  suited  to  her  youth 
so  generously  pledged  to  him:  "I'm  afraid  I  shall  only 
walk,  now,  Rosamond.  I'm  going  to  be  an  old  fellow 
presently.  I  hadn't  thought  of  it  before  this  knock- 
down, I  give  you  my  word.  If  I  had — I  hope  I  should 
have  raised  the  courage  to  keep  away  from  you." 

She  spoke  with  passionate  reassurance. 

' '  It  doesn't  alter  you.  It's  you — you  we  care  about — 
all  of  us." 

He  rose  and  came  a  step  nearer  her,  holding  out  his 
hands. 

"Come,  Rose,"  he  said,  smiling  at  her  with  eyes 
softened  at  her  tone.  "Come.  I  told  you  I  must  get 
used  to  you." 

She  had  risen  also  with  his  movement,  and  upon 
the  echo  of  his  words  came  her  sudden  backward  step, 
the  repelling  motion  of  her  hands,  involuntarily  out- 
stretched, and  her  sudden  cry,  "No,  no!" 

In  that  instant  she  had  changed.  Her  girlish  sweet- 
ness had  given  place  to  a  woman's  passion.  It  was  as 
if  he  had  seen  the  bud  of  maidenhood  flame  suddenly 
into  bloom.  But  it  was  a  strange  new  flower,  not,  his 
senses  told  him,  for  him  to  gather.  He  stood  there 
with  his  hands  outstretched,  in  the  involuntary  hope 
of  soothing  her  through  patience. 

"Come,  dear,"  he  said  again.  "Don't  be  cruel 
to  me." 


146  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Am  I  cruel? "  she  said,  in  swift  self -blame.  "Yes, 
you  think  so,  too.  You  are  right.  I  am  cruel." 

He  had  tune,  even  in  that  moment  of  bewilderment, 
for  a  little  side-track  of  wonder  over  the  new  tones  in 
her  voice.  He  had  known  her  sweet,  bewildering, 
gently  mocking,  but  not  thus — a  woman  with  the  notes 
of  life  at  her  command,  and  all  life's  challenges  flashing 
in  her  eyes  and  fixed  in  the  curves  of  her  grief -shadowed 
mouth.  His  hands  dropped  at  his  side. 

"What  is  it,  Rose?"  he  asked,  with  the  grave  gentle- 
ness that  had  brought  about  their  intimacy.  "You've 
got  something  to  tell  me." 

"No!"  she  cried — "no!"  and  then  she  added  slowly, 
"You  force  the  truth  from  me." 

"No,"  he  assured  her;  "believe  me,  no.  There's 
nothing  you  need  tell  me." 

"Yes,"  she  returned.  She  had  paled,  and  the  dark- 
ness of  her  hair  had  given  her  face  a  tragic  outline. 
"You  don't  mean  to;  but  there's  something  in  you 
that  demands  the  truth.  I  came  home  meaning  not  to 
tell  you — to  live  it  out  alone." 

He  felt  a  sudden  sickness,  and  accepted  it  with  the 
patience  of  those  who  have  often  entertained  the  pangs 
of  life. 

"Sit  down,  dear,"  he  said,  grasping  at  some  practical 
ease  for  both  of  them.  "We  can  talk  better  so." 

He  took  his  own  chair  as  he  spoke,  without  waiting 
for  her,  because  the  weakness  of  his  state  reminded 
him  anew  how  ill-equipped  he  was  for  any  shock.  She 
came  slowly  forward  and  stood  by  the  mantel,  resting 
her  arm  upon  it  and  bowing  her  head  upon  her  hands. 
Her  shoulders  trembled. 


THE  HANDS  OF  THE  FAITHFUL  147 

"Don't,"  he  whispered. 

After  a  moment  she  raised  her  head  again  and  turned 
upon  him  the  dry  passion  of  a  face  forbidden  tears. 

"No,"  she  answered,  with  a  determined  quiet,  "I 
won't.  Do  you  think  I  forget  how  weak  you  are? 
I  seem  to,  but  I  don't." 

He  made  an  impatient  gesture  of  the  hand. 

"Drop  that,"  he  commanded,  frowning.  "We  must 
get  at  the  sense  of  this.  What  is  the  matter?" 

Her  lips  noiselessly  formed  the  answer,  "Nothing," 
and  left  the  word  unsaid. 

"Don't  tell  me  that,"  he  insisted,  with  a  calculated 
sternness.  "Something  happened  to  you  while  you 
were  abroad." 

She  shook  her  head. 

"Don't,  child.  I  shall  find  you  out.  What  hap- 
pened? " 

"We  mustn't  talk  of  these  things,"  she  burst  forth. 
"Can't  you  see  how  shocking  this  is — to  see  you  pale 
and  miserable,  and  to  know — not  to  have  self-control 
enough  to  keep  from  troubling  you?" 

He  sat  regarding  her  in  deep  consideration,  his  brows 
drawn  together  over  the  problem  of  her  misery.  Sud- 
denly his  face  cleared.  A  smile  illumined  it. 

"Why,  child,"  he  said,  "I  know.  You  don't  care 
about  me  any  more.  You've  found  it  out,  and  you're 
afraid  to  tell  me." 

She  bent  her  face  to  her  hands  and  broke  into  tears. 
In  that  moment  of  her  veiled  vision  he  braced  himself 
against  the  blow  of  a  surprise  that  seemed  incredible. 
In  spite  of  all  his  disadvantages,  once  she  had 
loved  him  he  had  never  reflected  that  she  could  do  any- 


148  VANISHING  POINTS 

thing  else.  Indeed,  it  came  to  him  now  that  until 
this  shock  of  illness,  reminding  him  that  he  was  mortal, 
he  had  never  thought  of  life  or  any  of  its  possibilities 
as  weakening  for  years  to  come.  Yet  in  a  moment 
he  saw  youth  on  one  side  of  the  world  and  himself, 
very  much  alone,  on  the  other.  There  was  a  barrier 
between. 

"  Don't  cry,  child,"  he  counselled,  when  he  could 
summon  voice  and  felt  the  victory  of  finding  it  would 
serve.  "  You  mustn't  cry." 

"No,"  she  choked  into  her  handkerchief,  and  he 
cursed  his  state  anew,  knowing  what  pity  moved  her. 

"Now,"  said  he,  "let's  talk  it  over.  It's  a  simple 
matter.  You  make  it  terribly  complex." 

She  turned  on  him  her  sodden  face,  quivering  in 
its  determination  not  to  break  again. 

"I  can't  think  of  anything  worse,"  she  said,  "now, 
when  you're  ill,  to  make  a  scene — " 

"If  you  say  anything  more  or  think  anything  more 
about  my  being  ill,  you  will  compel  me  to  damn  my 
illness.  I've  done  that  quite  frequently  of  late.  How- 
ever, I  shall  bless  it  if  it  causes  you  to  estimate  me 
better,  or  brings  about  a  fuller  understanding  between 
us.  I  think  you  rather  want  to  take  off  the  little  ring, 
dear,  don't  you?" 

She  looked  at  the  blue  stone  where  it  shone  dark 
against  her  finger.  She  could  not  answer. 

"Want  me  to?"  he  asked.  "Just  be  sure  you  don't 
care,  dear,  won't  regret  it.  Then  pull  it  off  and  you'll 
feel  better." 

Involuntarily  she  obeyed  him,  and  held  it,  hesitating, 
in  the  hollow  of  her  hand. 


THE  HANDS  OF  THE  FAITHFUL  149 

"I  wish  you  needn't  give  it  back  to  me,"  he  said, 
tentatively.  "  Can't  you  wear  it  on  another  finger? 
No,  I  suppose  not.  Or  keep  it  in  your  trinket-box 
among  other  things?  Can't  you,  dear?" 

"I'll  send  it  to  you,"  she  said,  almost  inaudibly,  and 
laid  it  on  the  table  between  them. 

He  laughed.  "Bless  you,  child,  no!  I  can't  let  you 
play  sense  to  my  sensibility.  There!"  He  took  the 
ring  and  dropped  it  in  his  waistcoat  pocket,  where  it 
seemed  to  burn  him.  Then  he  turned  to  her,  and  spoke 
with  a  beguiling  warmth.  "Who  is  he,  Rose?  Don't 
you  want  to  tell  me?  " 

Imperious  life  had  flooded  back  into  her  face.  "It 
isn't  possible,"  she  said,  in  a  tone  where  hope  struggled 
unwillingly  against  beautiful  desire. 

"What  isn't  possible?" 

"That  things  should  seem  so  tragic  and  yet  be  so — 
sweet." 

The  last  word  was  almost  a  pathetic  prayer  to  him 
to  let  them  be  sweet  in  spite  of  all. 

"My  dear  Rose,"  he  said,  didactically,  "I  have  a 
clever  friend  who  tells  me  there  wouldn't  be  any  trage- 
dies if  everybody  had  common  sense.  I  have  common 
sense.  I  reek  with  it.  You  just  play  my  way.  Now" — 
he  leaned  forward,  coaxing  her — "who  is  he?" 

Her  lips  opened,  against  preconceived  resolve.  To 
her,  also,  the  incredible  was  happening.  Here  was  a 
dear  confidant  miraculously  made  out  of  anticipated 
grief. 

"I  used  to  know  him  here,"  she  breathed.  "We 
met  at  dancing-school  when  we  were  children." 

"SaxeKing!" 


150  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Yes.    He  is  studying  in  Germany.    We  saw  a  lot 
of  each  other  at  the  pension.    I  told  him  about  you,  I 
was  so  proud.     He  was  kind  to  me — kinder  because 
you  were  sick  and  I  was  worried.    Then,  one  night— 
her  voice  faltered. 

"Don't  tell  me,  child/'  he  said,  compassionately. 

"Yes,  I  must  tell  you."  Again  her  cheeks  were 
flaming.  "I  want  you  to  know  what  kind  of  girl  I  am. 
He  kissed  me.  He  wasn't  to  blame.  He  forgot.  I 
forgot,  too.  Then  I  knew  there  was  nothing  like  it — 
like  him.  But  I  was  a  traitor." 

"Dear  child!"  he  said.  "Don't  spoil  it  thinking 
foolish  thoughts.  Why,  it's  morning  with  you!  You're 
Juliet  at  the  casement.  Write  to  him,  dear.  Tell  him 
the  balcony'll  be  ready  by  the  time  he  comes.  Tell 
him  we've  put  up  the  staging  to-day,  and  the  vines  and 
things  will  be  set  out  to-morrow." 

He  rose,  steadying  himself,  as  he  did  so,  by  the  table. 
She  crossed  the  space  between  them  swiftly. 

"Oh,"  she  cried,  "how  good  you  are!  How  good! 
how  good!"  Then  a  shade  of  bew:lderment  mingled 
with  her  hope.  "Why,"  she  said,  "I  never  thought. 
You  don't  mind  a  bit.  Perhaps  you  didn't  care  for  me. 
Didn't  you  care  at  all?" 

He  was  looking  at  her  gravely,  but  in  her  wonder  she 
forgot  to  note  how  pale  he  was.  A  smile  touched  his 
lips  and  eyes — a  smile  she  had  perhaps  never  seen  there. 

"Dear,"  he  said,  "I  care  for  you  very  much.  But 
there  are  a  great  many  things  I  can't  tell  you  and  that 
you  can't  see  perhaps  until  you  'come  to  forty  year'. 
Things  are  harder  then — and  they  are  easier.  But  you 
write  to  him,  child,  you  write  to  him." 


THE  HANDS  OF  THE  FAITHFUL  151 

She  gave  him  both  hands  impetuously,  and  he  raised 
them  together  to  his  lips.  Then  he  got  out  of  the  room, 
knowing  that  she  was  standing  there  quite  still,  his 
roses  forgotten  almost  beneath  her  hand.  He  went 
down-stairs  and  out  into  the  street,  and  remembering 
suddenly  that  she  had  watched  his  coming  and  might 
also  see  him  go,  he  straightened  his  shoulders  and 
walked  off  buoyantly.  Once  round  a  shielding  corner, 
he  faltered,  rested  a  moment  for  breath,  and  then 
turned  down  to  the  wider  thoroughfare  where  he  could 
take  a  car.  Thereafter  all  he  could  remember  of  the 
ride  was  that  the  car  was  crowded,  and  that  a  woman 
holding  a  baby — an  angelic-looking  child — sat  next 
him,  and  that  he,  vaguely  irritated  and  compassionate 
because  the  child's  legs  hung  uncomfortably,  put  his 
hand  down  at  his  side  and  gathered  up  the  little  feet, 
supporting  them.  At  his  own  corner  he  released  them 
gently  and  got  out,  and  no  one  saw  his  service. 

It  was  in  his  own  library  that  he  sat  down  to  think, 
and  realize  that  he  had  nothing  left  for  action,  only  for 
the  reflections  that  are  like  broken  shards,  vivid  and 
keen-edged,  but  not  to  be  cemented  into  any  whole. 
At  first  he  could  scarcely  tell  how  deep  his  wound  was 
or  whether  it  bled  too  much.  It  must  bleed  a  little, 
he  told  himself.  He  must  be  hurt.  Yet  how  much 
he  hardly  knew,  or  whether  the  crimson  flow  was 
weakening  his  heart.  That  night,  with  the  habit  of 
those  whom  life  has  tutored,  he  was  able  to  sweep  his 
mind  clear  of  harassment  and  to  sleep,  and  the  next 
morning  dawned  with  the  fiat  that  a  new  phase  of  life 
must  enter.  Holiday  was  over;  now  he  must  work, 
and  accepting  the  decree,  he  sat  down  at  his  table  for 


152  VANISHING  POINTS 

the  first  time  since  his  illness  and  tried  to  begin  his 
beautiful  book.  An  hour's  futile  phrasing,  and  he 
dropped  his  pen  and  tore  the  page.  He  knew,  he 
thought,  his  doom,  and  desolation  fell  upon  him.  The 
genius,  whatever  it  was,  that  had  brooded  over  him 
and  moved  his  pen  to  action,  had  left  him. 

Thereafter  for  days  he  took  himself  to  the  library 
with  a  regularity  which  lulled  his  good  attendant  into 
the  belief  that  he  had  assumed  the  old  habit  of  work, 
too  soon,  perhaps,  and  yet  not  dangerously,  since  at 
night  it  left  him  calm.  But  he  was  not  writing  as  of 
old;  he  was  taking  an  inventory  of  his  life.  The  long 
nights  were  not  renewals;  they  were  still,  lucent  exposi- 
tions of  what  he  had  experienced  and  felt.  He  went 
back  to  the  beginning,  to  the  day  of  Anne  De  Lisle, 
and  now,  with  a  quickened  sense  of  his  own  abortive 
deeds,  he  confirmed  that  older  certainty  that  his  relation 
to  her,  cut  short  by  death,  had  been  his  first  significant 
failure.  He  even  nursed  a  pang  at  wondering  how 
much  sooner  she  had  died  because  he  had  not  under- 
stood and  answered  her  in  the  vague  stirrings  of  her 
virgin  life.  Then  his  work:  whatever  it  had  been,  the 
human  intention  in  it  had  not  told.  It  was  neither 
great  enough  to  bear  him  to  the  zone  of  admirations 
outside  criticism,  nor,  he  told  himself,  did  it  reach  the 
heart.  If  it  had  reached  the  heart  as  warm  as  it  had 
left  his  own,  there  would  be  signs  of  it :  flowers  growing 
along  the  way,  a  bird  in  the  thicket,  the  sound  of  mov- 
ing streams.  The  universe  had  closed  to  him.  He  felt 
muffled,  condemned  to  dwell  forever  in  one  spot  of 
mental  aridness,  while  other  younger  feet  could  press 
through  other  portals  to  the  dawn. 


THE  HANDS  OF  THE  FAITHFUL  153 

Then  he  came  to  what  had  seemed  speciously  the 
crown  of  his  whole  life:  Rose  Cameron.  He  stripped 
the  mantle  from  that  dream  and  flayed  it  to  the  bone. 
At  first  he  had  been  drawn  to  her  by  her  dewy  worship 
of  what  she  called  his  genius,  and  then  some  light  in 
her  pure  eyes  had  hinted  at  a  worship  of  himself.  Again 
he  saw  the  dawn.  Sleeping  germs  rose  up  in  him  and 
flowered;  it  was  like  youth,  multiplied  a  thousandfold 
in  the  rich  soil  of  manhood,  and  he  believed  in  miracles. 
The  miracle  was  that  one  could  lose  youth  and  have  it, 
see  love  go  and  then  recall  it  in  another  form,  mourn 
and  be  gloriously  comforted.  Now  in  his  pitiless  self- 
scrutiny  he  saw  that,  too,  for  what  it  was.  What  she 
called  his  genius  had  overdazzled  her.  To  find  it  at 
her  feet  and  not  accept  it  would  have  been  disloyalty 
to  the  sum  of  great  things  as  she  saw  them.  He  was 
a  hero,  and  she  longed  to  gird  him  with  the  sword.  But 
at  a  quicker  footfall,  a  young  voice  calling,  she  had 
broken  these  slight  loyalties  and  fled.  That,  too,  was 
failure. 

He  seemed  to  be  the  victim  of  some  great  reaction, 
unguessed  in  its  inexorable  poise  and  swing  until  to-day. 
In  his  youth  he  had  chosen  life,  as  he  saw  it  through  the 
medium  of  ambition,  and  real  life,  in  the  woman  who 
might  have  made  it  for  him,  had  escaped  him.  Then 
he  had  chosen  the  life  of  love,  and  his  work,  mysteriously 
his  through  some  divine  decree,  had  also  fled  away  and 
left  him  poor. 

All  through  these  days  of  dumbness,  when  he  was  not 
slipping  the  beads  of  remembered  folly,  he  was  sitting 
in  his  muffled  stillness  listening  to  the  closing  of  the 
doors  of  life,  or,  as  it  seemed  to  him  at  times,  stumbling 


154  VANISHING  POINTS 

about  like  a  child,  shut  up  for  reasons,  and  reaching  up 
to  try  one  door  after  another,  to  find  them  fast.  He 
took  an  inventory  of  what  was  left  him.  There  was 
very  little.  The  house  where  the  doors  had  closed  in 
upon  him  he  had  furnished  himself,  and  he  had  a  dull 
sense  that  he  should  get  no  comfort  out  of  it.  And 
outside  life  was  going  on,  bourgeoning  and  swelling, 
and  somehow,  for  no  reason  he  knew,  save  that  these 
were  his  waning  years,  hereafter  he  was  not  going  to 
be  able  to  smell  or  gather.  The  game  was  over  before 
he  fairly  knew  it  had  begun. 

There  one  evening  at  his  table  Doctor  Gardner 
found  him,  and  after  glancing  at  the  untouched 
paper  and  dry  pen,  said,  in  what  seemed  an  inci- 
dental kindliness,  "Maynard,  why  didn't  you  send 
for  me?  " 

Maynard  roused  himself  out  of  his  mental  swoon.  He 
performed  the  usual  small  hospitable  offices  to  the 
extent  of  a  pipe  and  a  glass.  But  Doctor  Gardner 
pushed  them  away  and  continued  looking  at  him. 

"Why  didn't  you?"  he  reiterated. 

"I've  been  very  well,"  said  Maynard.  At  last  he  was 
patient  with  his  state,  because  it  no  longer  moved 
him.  "I'm  weak,  that's  all." 

"Put  away  your  writing  and  come  into  the  air," 
said  the  doctor,  again  in  the  voice  of  one  who  found 
something  fragile  before  him,  a  bubble  of  life,  ready 
to  escape  him  at  a  touch. 

Maynard  shook  his  head. 

"I  don't  seem  to  want  to.  Too  much  trouble,"  he 
continued,  looking  neutrally  before  him. 

"You've  had  some  kind  of  a  setback,"  said  Gardner 


THE  HANDS  OF  THE  FAITHFUL  155 

at  last,  in  his  impersonal  voice.  "Don't  you  think 
you'd  better  tell  me?" 

Then  Maynard  did  look  up,  with  a  smile,  languid 
enough  but  warmed  by  something  of  his  old  sunshine. 

"Hands  off,  old  man,"  he  said.  "You've  got  a 
streak  of  woman  in  you.  That's  why  your  sympathy 
is  so  beguiling.  But  don't  you  let  me  tell.  I  can't 
stand  it." 

At  that  moment  the  man  came  in  and  laid  a  stack  of 
letters  down  before  him.  There  were  so  many  that 
some  of  them  fell  almost  into  his  hand,  and  he  drew 
it  away  to  give  them  room.  He  looked  at  them  idly. 

"What  an  extraordinary  mail!"  he  commented. 

"Have  you  seen  the  papers  lately?  "  asked  Gardner, 
with  a  quickening  in  his  voice.  The  color  had  risen 
to  his  face  with  the  potential  wisdom  of  the  message 
he  had  brought. 

"No;  I  don't  read,  these  days." 

"The  amount  of  it  is,  some  busybody  has  found  out 
about  your  illness,  garnished  it  up,  and  sent  it  to  the 
papers.  They're  full  of  it." 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Maynard,  whimsically,  "not  that,  I 
guess.  I'm  not  so  important  as  all  that." 

"You'd  better  read  them.  Or — look  at  your  mail. 
Read  that." 

Maynard  put  out  his  hand  and  with  a  random  choice 
took  up  a  letter.  It  was  a  poor  little  letter,  in  a  feeble 
script.  There  was  no  signature,  but  it  was  a  woman's 
hand,  formed  in  country  schools  in  older  days.  She 
had  seen  the  news  of  his  illness  in  the  paper.  It  had 
been  a  shock  to  her,  and  she  wanted  to  express,  though 
late,  her  gratitude  for  all  he  had  given  her.  She  was 


156  VANISHING  POINTS 

thankful  he  was  better.  Yet,  when  he  should  die, 
"they  will  meet  you  and  praise  you,"  she  wrote,  " those 
who  have  come  through  much  tribulation. " 

He  laid  down  the  letter.  There  was  a  blur  before 
his  eyes. 

1 '  Those  who  have  come  through  much  tribulation/  ' 
he  repeated.     " That's  a  good  line,  Gardner."     Sud- 
denly with  a  sweep  of  the  hand  he  pushed  the  letters 
over  to  his  friend.    "Open  them,  will  you?"  he  begged, 
in  a  fever.    "Are  there  more  like  that? " 

Gardner  began  with  a  subdued  haste,  as  if  they  were 
medicinal,  reading  a  line  here,  a  name  there.  They 
were  of  all  sorts,  from  the  almost  forgotten  schoolmate, 
separated  from  his  fellow  in  the  throng,  to  the  critic 
of  a  later  day,  but  they  were,  as  if  by  an  amazing  in- 
tention, in  one  key.  The  world  was  sorry  because  he 
had  been  so  near  the  leaving  of  it.  And  like  those  who, 
tongue-tied  in  daily  life  are  yet  shaken  into  outcry  by 
a  common  danger,  these  men  and  women  voiced  their 
gratitude,  and  it  might  be,  Maynard  dared  to  think, 
their  love.  This  was  the  fellowship  he  had  created  for 
himself,  or  that  God,  through  giving  him  a  gift,  had 
created  for  him.  He  sat  there  with  a  hand  shading  his 
eyes,  while  Gardner,  reading,  glanced  up,  from  time  to 
time,  to  see  if  there  had  been  enough.  Maynard  spoke 
at  last. 

"That'll  do.  I'll  go  through  the  rest  to-morrow. 
They're  curiously  alike,  Gardner." 

"Yes,  curiously.  It  seems  to  be  affection.  I  won't 
say  gratitude,  because  you  don't  like  that.  But  it's  a 
thing  so  foreign  to  this  modern  world  that  it's  a  miracle. 
It  seems  as  if  these  people  had  been  standing  apart 


THE  HANDS  OF  THE  FAITHFUL  157 

from  you  to  give  you  breathing-room,  not  crowding, 
as  if  to  let  your  arm  have  play.  Doesn't  it  seem  so, 
Maynard?" 

Maynard  nodded,  his  hand  before  his  eyes.  The 
doctor  went  on  slowly,  partly  as  if  he  sought  out  the 
right  word  to  fit  his  patient,  and  partly  because  the 
moment  really  seemed  to  him  amazing.  "I  never  saw 
anything  of  the  kind.  It  looks  as  if  you  had  been,  not 
ignored,  but  hedged  about  because  you  were  so  precious 
— a  seed  in  a  garden-bed,  when  there's  no  other  seed 
exactly  like  it.  I  never  heard  of  such  a  thing,  in  these 
days  of  hounding  men  to  death  because  they  have  a 
gift.  Usually,  you  know,  it's — well,  it's  as  if  nature 
gave  some  of  you  a  present  and  shut  it  up  in  your  hand, 
and  then  the  crowd  runs  after  you  and  tumbles  over 
you  and  tries  to  get  a  sight  of  it,  as  hens  chase  down  one 
that's  got  a  bug  too  big  to  swallow.  But  they've  stood 
back.  They've  given  you  air.  And  now,  when  they 
think  you've  stumbled,  they  can't  be  quick  enough 
with  the  glad  hand." 

Maynard  had  risen  and  walked  to  the  window.  He 
stood  there  with  his  back  to  his  friend,  and  Gardner 
had  a  vague  reflection  of  what  he  must  be  thinking, 
though  not  with  the  clarified  vision  that  tingled  over 
Maynard's  nerves.  He  knew  that  Maynard  in  that 
instant  saw  himself,  not  as  a  suffering  atom,  but  a  cit- 
izen of  worlds.  The  man  had  been  sitting  at  his  loom  in 
darkness,  and  now  a  wind  had  risen  and  turned  the 
fabric  to  the  sun. 

Maynard  was  speaking. 

"Did  you  ever  think  we  get  to  a  place  sometimes 
where  we — we  can't  live  unless  somebody  lives  for  us? 


158  VANISHING  POINTS 

We  haven't  breath  enough.  Som^bMy's  got  to  pump 
it  in.  We  haven't  blood  enough  oomebody's  got  to 
open  a  vein." 

"  Precisely." 

"In  the  beginning  our  mothers  live  for  us.  We're 
fed.  Then  we  think  we  feed  ourselves.  We  get  arro- 
gant, and  it  isn't  till  we  stumble  that  we  know  how 
weak  we  are,  and  then  we  find — God,  man!  it's  fellow- 
ship. With  their  hands  they  bear  us  up — " 

He  stopped,  and  Gardner,  watching  him,  did  not 
speak.  Maynard  walked  back  to  the  table  with  a 
firmer  step  than  he  had  taken  for  many  days.  He  stood 
there,  resting  a  hand  on  the  blank  pages  at  his  place. 

"I've  got  to  get  to  work,"  he  said,  imperatively. 

"You  shall." 

"You  must  police  me  a  little,  see  that  I  don't  go 
too  fast — " 

"I  will.  You've  had  some  knockdown.  I  don't 
know  what  it  is,  and  it  isn't  necessary  I  should.  But  it's 
bruised  you.  That's  temporary,  however.  Mind  me, 
and  you  shall  sit  here  at  your  desk — " 

"When?" 

"To-morrow,  for  ten  minutes.  The  next  day,  ten. 
In  six  months,  your  old  four  hours.  Now  you'll  take 
some  drops  I  have  here  and  go  to  bed." 

Before  the  sedative  got  its  grip,  Maynard,  lying, 
hands  crossed  and  will  quiescent,  was  conscious  of 
thoughts  so  comforting  that  they  seemed  like  actual 
visitants — men  and  women  who  wished  him  well.  They 
gave  him  a  smiling  sense  that  the  world  was  richly 
peopled.  When  he  had  been  most  bereft,  they  made  it 
apparent  to  him  that  he  had  been  still  qqinpanioned. 


THE  HANDS  OF  THE  FAITHFUL  159 

When  he  had  seemed  to  himself  too  poor  a  thing  to  be 
cast  outside  on  the  refuse-heap  of  abortive  life,  they 
had  wrapped  him  in  a  mantle  woven,  they  told  him, 
by  his  own  hands,  and  led  him  forth  with  pseans  and 
rejoicing.  Mysteriously  among  them  was  Anne  De 
Lisle.  She  had  been  with  him  through  it  all,  when 
his  will  swung  from  attainment  to  the  human  and  back 
again  to  his  dear  task.  Some  beautiful  poise  had  been 
kept  because  her  hands  had  steadied  it.  That  the 
slender  threads  of  his  own  life  had  penetrated  the  life 
outside  him  was  because  she  had  helped  to  make  them 
hold.  It  had  ended  by  being  her  most  beneficent  gift 
to  die  that  he  might  live,  and  she  had  been  glad  to  offer 
it. 

Then  as  the  soothing  drug  laid  firmer  fingers  on  him, 
he  saw  himself  as  if  for  the  moment  he  were  detached 
from  all  his  old  desires.  He  seemed  to  be  marching 
in  a  procession,  the  innumerable  throng  of  silent  and 
absorbed  artificers.  They  were  on  their  way  to  a 
temple — what  temple  he  did  not  know;  but  as  he  tried 
to  fix  it,  his  drowsy  mind  insisted  upon  abstract  defini- 
tion in  the  words  "one  far-off  divine  event",  and  he 
accepted  it  as  quite  satisfactory  to  know  that  and  no 
more.  Each  one  of  the  workmen  carried  something, 
as  if  it  were  a  gift  entrusted  to  him  to  bear  safely  to 
the  temple.  At  first  it  seemed  to  him  that  only  the 
favored  ones  had  gifts;  and  then  he  knew  that  all  created 
things  held  something  precious,  and  must  guard  it, 
whether  it  was  the  mother  who  must  shield  her  child 
or  the  poet  who  must  keep  the  rhythm  of  his  song,  or 
the  beetle  that  had  sheen  upon  its  wings.  He  did  not 
clearly  see  how,  but  it  was  apparent  to  him,  in  the  way 


160  VANISHING  POINTS 

of  the  vision,  that  there  was  more  than  this:  for  every- 
body was  guarding  not  only  his  own  gift,  but  the  gift 
of  everybody  else.  It  was  a  web  of  service,  a  harmony 
of  multitudinous  notes,  and  all  mysteriously  for  the 
temple. 

And  through  the  surge  of  deepening  peace  was  the 
certainty  that  in  the  morning  he  should  begin  his 
beautiful  book. 


THE  WIZARD'S  TOUCH 

JEROME  WILMER  sat  in  the  garden,  painting 
in  a  background,  with  the  carelessness  of  ease. 
He  seemed  to  be  dabbing  little  touches  at  the 
canvas,  as  a  spontaneous  kind  of  fun  not  likely  to 
result  in  anything  serious,  save,  perhaps,  the  necessity 
of  scrubbing  them  off  afterward,  like  a  too  adventurous 
child.  Mary  Brinsley,  in  her  lilac  print,  stood  a  few 
paces  away,  the  sun  on  her  hair,  and  watched  him. 

"  Paris  is  very  becoming  to  you,"  she  said,  at  last. 

"What  do  you  mean?"  asked  Wilmer,  glancing  up, 
and  then  beginning  to  consider  her  so  particularly 
that  she  stepped  aside,  her  brows  knitted,  with  an 
admonishing, — 

"Look  out!  you'll  get  me  into  the  landscape." 

"You're  always  in  the  landscape.  What  do  you 
mean  about  Paris?" 

"You  look  so — so  travelled,  so  equal  to  any  place, 
and  Paris  in  particular  because  it's  the  finest." 

Other  people  also  had  said  that,  in  their  various  ways. 
He  had  the  distinction  set  by  nature  upon  a  muscular 
body  and  a  rather  small  head,  well  poised.  His  hah-, 
now  turning  gray,  grew  delightfully  about  the  temples, 
and  though  it  was  brushed  back  in  the  style  of  a  man 
who  never  looks  at  himself  twice  when  once  will  do, 
it  had  a  way  of  seeming  entirely  right.  His  brows  were 
firm,  his  mouth  determined,  and  the  close  pointed 

161 


•  162  VANISHING  POINTS 

beard  brought  his  face  to  a  delicate  finish.  Even  his 
clothes,  of  the  kind  that  never  look  new,  had  fallen 
into  lines  of  easy  use. 

"  You  needn't  guy  me,"  he  said,  and  went  on  painting. 
But  he  flashed  his  sudden  smile  at  her.  "Isn't  New 
England  becoming  to  me,  too?" 

"Yes,  for  the  summer.  It's  overpowered.  In  the 
winter  Aunt  Celia  calls  you  'Jerry  Wilmer'.  She's 
quite  topping  then.  But  the  minute  you  appear  with 
European  labels  on  your  trunks  and  that  air  of  speaking 
foreign  lingo,  she  gives  out  completely.  Every  time 
she  sees  your  name  in  the  paper  she  forgets  you  went 
to  school  at  the  Academy  and  built  the  fires.  She 
calls  you  'our  boarder'  then,  for  as  much  as  a  week  and 
a  half." 

"Quit  it,  Mary,"  said  he,  smiling  at  her  again. 

"Well,"  said  Mary,  yet  without  turning,  "I  must  go 
and  weed  a  while." 

"No,"  put  in  Wilmer  innocently;  "he  won't  be  over 
yet.  He  had  a  big  mail.  I  brought  it  to  him." 

Mary  blushed,  and  made  as  if  to  go.  She  was  a 
woman  of  thirty-five,  well  poised,  and  sweet  through 
wholesomeness.  Her  face  had  been  cut  on  a  regular 
pattern,  and  then  some  natural  influence  had  touched 
it  up  beguilingly  with  contradictions.  She  swung  back, 
after  her  one  tentative  step,  and  sobered. 

"How  do  you  think  he  is  looking?"  she  asked. 

"Prime." 

"Not  so— " 

"Not  so  morbid  as  when  I  was  here  last  summer," 
he  helped  her  out.  "Not  by  any  means.  Are  you 
going  to  marry  him,  Mary?"  The  question  had  only  a 


THE  WIZARD'S  TOUCH  168 

civil  emphasis,  but  a  warmer  tone  informed  it.  Mary 
grew  pink  under  the  morning  light,  and  Jerome  went 
on:  "Yes,  I  have  a  perfect  right  to  talk  about  it.  I 
don't  travel  three  thousand  miles  every  summer  to 
ask  you  to  marry  me  without  earning  some  claim  to 
frankness.  I  mentioned  that  to  Marshby  himself. 
We  met  at  the  station,  you  remember,  the  day  I  came. 
We  walked  down  together.  He  spoke  about  my  sketch- 
ing, and  I  told  him  I  had  come  on  my  annual  pilgrimage, 
to  ask  Mary  Brinsley  to  marry  me." 

"Jerome!" 

"Yes,  I  did.  This  is  my  tenth  pilgrimage.  Mary, 
will  you  marry  me?" 

"No,"  said  Mary  softly,  but  as  if  she  liked  him  very 
much.  "No,  Jerome." 

Wilmer  squeezed  a  tube  on  his  palette  and  re- 
garded the  color,  frowningly.  "Might  as  well,  Mary," 
said  he.  "You'd  have  an  awfully  good  time  in 
Paris." 

She  was  perfectly  still,  watching  him,  and  he  went 
on: 

"Now  you're  thinking  if  Marshby  gets  the  consulate 
you'll  be  across  the  water  anyway,  and  you  could  run 
down  to  Paris  and  see  the  sights.  But  it  wouldn't 
be  the  same  thing.  It's  Marshby  you  like,  but  you'd 
have  a  better  time  with  me." 

"It's  a  foregone  conclusion  that  the  consulship  will 
be  offered  him,"  said  Mary.  Her  eyes  were  now  on  the 
path  leading  through  the  garden  and  over  the  wall  to 
the  neighboring  house  where  Marshby  lived. 

"Then  you  will  marry  and  go  with  him.  Ah,  well, 
that's  finished.  I  needn't  come  another  summer. 


164  VANISHING  POINTS 

When  you  are  in  Paris,  I  can  show  you  the  boulevards 
and  cafes." 

"It  is  more  than  probable  he  won't  accept  the  consul- 
ship." 

"Why?"  He  held  his  palette  arrested  in  mid-air 
and  stared  at  her. 

"He  is  doubtful  of  himself — doubtful  whether  he  is 
equal  to  so  responsible  a  place." 

"Bah!  it's  not  an  embassy." 

"No;  but  he  fancies  he  has  not  the  address,  the  social 
gifts — in  fact,  he  shrinks  from  it."  Her  face  had  taken 
on  a  soft  distress;  her  eyes  appealed  to  him.  She 
seemed  to  be  confessing,  for  the  other  man,  something 
that  might  well  be  misunderstood.  Jerome,  ignoring 
the  flag  of  her  discomfort,  went  on  painting,  to  give  her 
room  for  confidence. 

"Is  it  that  old  plague-spot?"  he  asked,  with  a  whole- 
some candor.  "Why  not  talk  freely  about  it?  Just 
what  aspect  does  it  bear  to  him?" 

"It  is  the  old  remorse.  He  misunderstood  his 
brother  when  they  two  were  left  alone  in  the  world. 
He  forced  the  boy  out  of  evil  associations  when  he 
ought  to  have  led  him.  You  know  the  rest  of  it.  The 
boy  was  desperate.  He  killed  himself." 

' '  When  he  was  drunk.    Marshby  wasn't  responsible. ' ' 

"No,  not  directly.  But  you  know  that  kind  of  mind. 
It  follows  hidden  causes.  That's  why  his  essays  are  so 
good.  Anyway,  it  has  crippled  him.  It  came  when  he 
was  too  young,  and  it  marked  him  for  life.  He  has 
an  inveterate  self -distrust." 

"Ah,  well,"  said  Wilmer,  including  the  summer 
landscape  in  a  wave  of  his  brush,  "give  up  the  consul- 


THE  WIZARD'S  TOUCH  165 

ship.  Let  him  give  it  up.  It  isn't  as  if  he  hadn't  a 
roof.  Settle  down  in  his  house  there,  you  two,  and  let 
him  write  his  essays,  and  you — just  be  happy." 

She  ignored  her  own  part  in  the  prophecy  completely 
and  finally.  "  It  isn't  the  consulship  as  the  consulship," 
she  responded.  "It  is  the  life  abroad  I  want  for  him. 
It  would  give  him — well,  it  would  give  him  what  it  has 
given  you.  His  work  would  show  it."  She  spoke  hotly, 
and  at  once  Jerome  saw  himself  envied  for  his  brilliant 
cosmopolitan  life,  the  bounty  of  his  success  fairly 
coveted  for  the  other  man.  It  gave  him  a  curious  pang. 
He  felt,  somehow,  impoverished,  and  drew  his  breath 
more  meagrely.  But  the  actual  thought  in  his  mind 
grew  too  big  to  be  suppressed,  and  he  stayed  his  hand 
to  look  at  her. 

"That's  not  all,"  he  said. 

"All  what?" 

"That's  not  the  main  reason  why  you  want  him  to 
go.  You  think  if  he  really  asserted  himself,  really 
knocked  down  the  spectre  of  his  old  distrust  and 
stamped  on  it,  he  would  be  a  different  man.  If  he 
had  once  proved  himself,  as  we  say  of  younger  chaps, 
he  could  go  on  proving." 

"No,"  she  declared,  in  nervous  loyalty.  She  was 
like  a  bird  fluttering  to  save  her  nest.  "No!  You 
are  wrong.  I  ought  not  to  have  talked  about  him  at 
all.  I  shouldn't  to  anybody  else.  Only,  you  are  so 
kind." 

"It's  easy  to  be  kind,"  said  Jerome,  gently,  "when 
there's  nothing  else  left  us." 

She  stood  wilfully  swaying  a  branch  of  the  tendrilled 
arbor,  and,  he  subtly  felt,  so  dissatisfied  with  herself 


166  VANISHING  POINTS 

for  her  temporary  disloyalty  that  she  felt  alien  to  them 
both:  Marshby  because  she  had  wronged  him  by  ad- 
mitting another  man  to  this  intimate  knowledge  of  him, 
and  the  other  man  for  being  her  accomplice. 

" Don't  be  sorry,"  he  said,  softly.  "You  haven't 
been  naughty." 

But  she  had  swung  round  to  some  comprehension 
of  what  he  had  a  right  to  feel. 

"It  makes  one  very  selfish,"  she  said,  waveringly, 
"to  want — to  want  things  to  come  out  right." 

"I  know.  Well,  can't  we  make  them  come  out  right? 
He  is  sure  of  the  consulship?" 

"Practically." 

"You  want  to  be  assured  of  his  taking  it." 

She  did  not  answer;  but  her  face  lighted,  as  if  to  a 
new  appeal.  Jerome  followed  her  look  along  the  path. 
Marshby  himself  was  coming.  He  was  no  weakling. 
He  swung  along  easily  with  the  stride  of  a  man  accus- 
tomed to  using  his  body  well.  He  had  not,  perhaps, 
the  urban  air,  and  yet  there  was  nothing  about  him 
which  would  not  have  responded  at  once  to  a  more 
exacting  civilization.  Jerome  knew  his  face, — knew 
it  from  their  college  days  together  and  through  these 
annual  visits  of  his  own;  but  now,  as  Marshby  ap- 
proached, the  artist  rated  him  not  so  much  by  the 
friendly  as  the  professional  eye.  He  saw  a  man  who 
looked  the  scholar  and  the  gentleman,  keen  though 
not  imperious  of  glance.  His  visage,  mature  even  for 
its  years,  had  suffered  more  from  emotion  than  from 
deeds  or  the  assaults  of  fortune.  Marshby  had  lived 
the  life  of  thought,  and,  exaggerating  action,  had 
failed  to  fit  himself  to  any  form  of  it.  Wilmer  glanced 


THE  WIZARD'S  TOUCH  167 

at  his  hands,  too,  as  they  swung  with  his  walk,  and  then 
remembered  that  the  professional  eye  had  already 
noted  them  and  laid  their  lines  away  for  some  suggestive 
use.  As  he  looked,  Marshby  stopped  in  his  approach, 
caught  by  the  singularity  of  a  gnarled  tree  limb.  It 
awoke  in  him  a  cognizance  of  nature's  processes,  and 
his  face  lighted  with  the  pleasure  of  it. 

"So  you  won't  marry  me?'*  asked  Wilmer,  softly, 
in  that  pause. 

"Don't!"  said  Mary. 

"Why  not,  when  you  won't  tell  whether  you're 
engaged  to  him  or  not?  Why  not,  anyway?  If  I  were 
sure  you'd  be  happier  with  me,  Fd  snatch  you  out  of 
his  very  maw.  Yes,  I  would.  Are  you  sure  you  like 
him,  Mary?" 

The  girl  did  not  answer,  for  Marshby  had  started 
again.  Jerome  got  the  look  in  her  face,  and  smiled 
a  little,  sadly. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "you're  sure." 

Mary  immediately  felt  unable  to  encounter  them 
together.  She  gave  Marshby  a  good-morning,  and,  to 
his  bewilderment,  made  some  excuse  about  her  weeding, 
and  flitted  past  him  on  the  path.  His  eyes  followed  her, 
and  when  they  came  back  to  Wilmer  the  artist  nodded 
brightly. 

"I've  just  asked  her,"  he  said. 

"Asked  her?"  Marshby  was  about  to  pass  him, 
pulling  out  his  glasses  and  at  the  same  time  peering 
at  the  picture  with  the  impatience  of  his  nearsighted 
look. 

"There,  don't  you  do  that!"  cried  Jerome,  stopping 
with  his  brush  in  air.  "Don't  you  come  round  and 


168  VANISHING  POINTS 

stare  over  my  shoulder.  It  makes  me  nervous  as  the 
devil.  Step  back  there — there  by  that  mullein.  So! 
I've  got  to  face  my  protagonist.  Yes,  I've  been  asking 
her  to  marry  me." 

Marshby  stiffened.  His  head  went  up,  his  jaw 
tightened.  He  looked  the  jealous  ire  of  the  male. 

"What  do  you  want  me  to  stand  here  for?"  he  asked, 
irritably. 

"But  she  refused  me,"  said  Wilmer,  cheerfully. 
"Stand  still,  that's  a  good  fellow.  I'm  using  you." 

Marshby  had  by  an  effort  pulled  himself  together. 
He  dismissed  Mary  from  his  mind,  as  he  wished  to 
drive  her  from  the  other  man's  speech. 

"  I've  been  reading  the  morning  paper  on  your 
exhibition,"  he  said,  bringing  out  the  journal  from  his 
pocket.  "  They  can't  say  enough  about  you." 

"  Oh,  can't  they!  Well,  the  better  for  me.  What 
are  they  pleased  to  discover?" 

"  They  say  you  see  round  corners  and  through  deal 
boards.  Listen."  He  struck  open  the  paper  and  read: 
; '  A  man  with  a  hidden  crime  upon  his  soul  will  do  well 
to  elude  this  greatest  of  modern  magicians.  The  man 
with  a  secret  tells  it  the  instant  he  sits  down  before 
Jerome  Wilmer.  Wilmer  does  not  paint  faces,  brows, 
hands.  He  paints  hopes,  fears,  and  longings.  If  we 
could,  in  our  turn,  get  to  the  heart  of  his  mystery! 
If  we  could  learn  whether  he  says  to  himself:  "I  see 
hate  in  that  face,  hypocrisy,  greed.  I  will  paint  them. 
That  man  is  not  man,  but  cur.  He  shall  fawn  on  my 
canvas."  Or  does  he  paint  through  a  kind  of  inspired 
carelessness,  and  as  the  line  obeys  the  eye  and  hand,  so 
does  the  emotion  live  in  the  line? '  " 


THE  WIZARD'S  TOUCH  169 

"Oh,  gammon!"  snapped  Wilmer. 

"Well,  do  you?"  said  Marshby,  tossing  the  paper 
to  the  little  table  where  Mary's  work-box  stood. 

"Do  I  what?  Spy  and  then  paint,  or  paint  and  find 
I've  spied?  Oh,  I  guess  I  plug  along  like  any  other 
decent  workman.  When  it  comes  to  that,  how  do  you 
write  your  essays?" 

"I!  Oh!"  Marshby's  face  clouded.  "That's 
another  pair  of  sleeves.  Your  work  is  colossal.  I'm 
still  on  cherry-stones." 

"Well,"  said  Wilmer,  with  slow  incisiveness,  "you've 
accomplished  one  thing  I'd  sell  my  name  for.  You've 
got  Mary  Brinsley  bound  to  you  so  fast  that  neither 
lure  not  lash  can  stir  her.  I've  tried  it — tried  Paris 
even,  the  crudest  bribe  there  is.  No  good!  She  won't 
have  me." 

At  her  name  Marshby  straightened  again  and  there 
was  fire  in  his  eye.  Wilmer,  sketching  him  in,  seemed  to 
gain  distinct  impulse  from  the  pose,  and  worked  the  faster. 

"Don't  move,"  he  ordered.  "There,  that's  right. 
So,  you  see,  you're  the  successful  chap.  I'm  the  failure. 
She  won't  have  me."  There  was  such  feeling  in  his 
tone  that  Marshby's  expression  softened  compre- 
hendingly.  He  understood  a  pain  that  prompted  such 
a  man  to  rash  avowal. 

"I  don't  believe  we'd  better  speak  of  her,"  he  said, 
in  awkward  kindliness. 

"I  want  to,"  returned  Wilmer.  "I  want  to  tell  you 
how  lucky  you  are." 

Again  that  shade  of  introspective  bitterness  clouded 
Marshby's  face.  "Yes,"  said  he,  involuntarily.  "But 
how  about  her?  Is  she  lucky?  " 


170  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Yes,"  replied  Jerome,  steadily.  "She's  got  what 
she  wants.  She  won't  worship  you  any  the  less  be- 
cause you  don't  worship  yourself.  That's  the  mad  way 
they  have — women.  It's  an  awful  challenge.  You've 
got  a  fight  before  you,  if  you  don't  refuse  it." 

"God!"  groaned  Marshby  to  himself,  "it  is  a  fight. 
I  can't  refuse  it." 

Wilmer  put  his  question  without  mercy.  "Do  you 
want  to?" 

"I  want  her  to  be  happy,"  said  Marshby,  with  a 
simple  humility  afar  from  cowardice.  "I  want  her 
to  be  safe.  I  don't  see  how  anybody  could  be  safe — 
with  me." 

"Well,"  pursued  Wilmer,  recklessly,  "would  she 
be  safe  with  me?  " 

"I  think  so,"  said  Marshby,  keeping  an  unblemished 
dignity.  "I  have  thought  that  for  a  good  many  years." 

"But  not  happy?" 

"No,  not  happy.  She  would —  We  have  been  together 
so  long." 

"Yes,  she'd  miss  you.  She's  die  of  homesickness. 
Well!"  He  sat  contemplating  Marshby  with  his  pro- 
fessional stare;  but  really  his  mind  was  opened  for 
the  first  time  to  the  full  reason  for  Mary's  unchang- 
ing love.  Marshby  stood  there  so  quiet,  so  oblivious 
of  himself  in  comparison  with  unseen  things,  so  much 
a  man  from  head  to  foot,  that  he  justified  the  woman's 
loyal  passion  as  nothing  had  before.  "Shall  you  accept 
the  consulate?"  Wilmer  asked,  abruptly. 

Brought  face  to  face  with  fact,  Marshby's  pose 
slackened.  He  drooped  perceptibly.  "Probably  not," 
he  said.  "No,  decidedly  not." 


THE  WIZARD'S  TOUCH  171 

Wilmer  swore  under  his  breath,  and  sat,  brows  bent, 
marvelling  at  the  change  in  him.  The  man's  infirmity 
of  will  had  blighted  him.  He  was  so  truly  another 
creature  that  not  even  a  woman's  unreasoning  cham- 
pionship could  pull  him  into  shape  again. 

Mary  Brinsley  came  swiftly  down  the  path,  trowel 
in  one  hand  and  her  basket  of  weeds  in  the  other. 
Wilmer  wondered  if  she  had  been  glancing  up  from  some 
flowery  screen  and  read  the  story  of  that  altered  posture. 
She  looked  sharply  anxious,  like  a  mother  whose  child 
is  threatened.  Jerome  shrewdly  knew  that  Marshby's 
telltale  attitude  was  no  unfamiliar  one. 

"What  have  you  been  saying?"  she  asked,  in  laugh- 
ing challenge,  yet  with  anxiety  underneath. 

"I'm  painting  him  in,"  said  Wilmer;  but  as  she  came 
toward  him  he  turned  the  canvas  dexterously.  "No," 
said  he,  "no.  I've  got  my  idea  from  this.  To-morrow 
Marshby's  going  to  sit." 

That  was  all  he  would  say,  and  Mary  put  it  aside 
as  one  of  his  pleasantries  made  to  fit  the  hour.  But 
next  day  he  set  up  a  big  canvas  in  the  barn  that  served 
him  as  workroom,  and  summoned  Marshby  from  his 
books.  He  came  dressed  exactly  right,  in  his  every- 
day clothes  that  had  comfortable  wrinkles  hi  them, 
and  easily  took  his  pose.  For  all  his  concern  over  the 
inefficiency  of  his  life,  as  a  life,  he  was  entirely  without 
self-consciousness  in  his  personal  habit.  Jerome  liked 
that,  and  began  to  like  him  better  as  he  knew  him  more. 
A  strange  illuminative  process  went  on  in  his  mind 
toward  the  man  as  Mary  saw  him,  and  more  and  more 
he  nursed  a  fretful  sympathy  with  her  desire  to  see 
Marshby  tuned  up  to  some  pitch  that  should  make 


172  VANISHING  POINTS 

him  livable  to  himself.  It  seemed  a  cruelty  of  nature 
that  any  man  should  so  scorn  his  own  company  and  yet 
be  forced  to  keep  it  through  an  allotted  span.  In  that 
sitting  Marshby  was  at  first  serious  and  absent-minded. 
Though  his  body  was  obediently  there,  the  spirit 
seemed  to  be  busy  somewhere  else. 

"Head  up!"  cried  Jerome  at  last,  brutally.  "Heav- 
ens, man,  don't  skulk!" 

Marshby  straightened  under  the  blow.  It  hit  harder, 
as  Jerome  meant  it  should,  than  any  verbal  rallying. 
It  sent  the  man  back  over  his  own  life  to  the  first 
stumble  in  it. 

"I  want  you  to  look  as  if  you  heard  drums  and  fife," 
Jerome  explained,  with  one  of  his  quick  smiles,  that 
always  wiped  out  former  injury. 

But  the  flush  was  not  yet  out  of  Marshby's  face, 
and  he  answered,  bitterly,  "I  might  run." 

"I  don't  mind  your  looking  as  if  you'd  like  to  run 
and  knew  you  couldn't,"  said  Jerome,  dashing  in 
strokes  now  in  a  happy  certainty. 

"Why  couldn't  I?"  asked  Marshby,  still  from  that 
abiding  scorn  of  his  own  ways. 

"Because  you  can't,  that's  all.  Partly  because  you 
get  the  habit  of  facing  the  music.  I  should  like— 
Wilmer  had  an  unconsidered  way  of  entertaining  his 
sitters,  without  much  expenditure  to  himself;  he  pur- 
sued a  fantastic  habit  of  talk  to  keep  their  blood  mov- 
ing, and  did  it  with  the  eye  of  the  mind  unswervingly  on 
his  work.  "If  I  were  you,  I'd  do  it.  I'd  write  an  essay 
on  the  muscular  habit  of  courage.  Your  coward  is  born 
weak-kneed.  He  shouldn't  spill  himself  all  over  the 
p]ace  trying  to  put  on  the  spiritual  make-up  of  a  hero. 


THE  WIZARD'S  TOUCH  173 

He  must  simply  strengthen  his  knees.  When  they'll 
take  him  anywhere  he  requests,  without  buckling,  he 
wakes  up  and  finds  himself  a  field-marshal.  Voild!" 

"It  isn't  bad,"  said  Marshby,  unconsciously  straight- 
ening. "Go  ahead,  Jerome.  Turn  us  all  into  field- 
marshals." 

"Not  all,"  objected  Wilmer,  seeming  to  dash  his 
brush  at  the  canvas  with  the  large  carelessness  that 
promised  his  best  work.  "The  jobs  wouldn't  go  round. 
But  I  don't  feel  the  worse  for  it  when  I  see  the  recruity 
stepping  out,  promotion  in  his  eye." 

After  the  sitting,  Wilmer  went  yawning  forward, 
and  with  a  hand  on  Marshby's  shoulder,  took  him  to 
the  door. 

"Can't  let  you  look  at  the  thing,"  he  said,  as  Marshby 
gave  one  backward  glance.  "That's  against  the  code. 
Till  it's  done,  no  eye  touches  it  but  mine  and  the  light 
of  heaven." 

Marshby  had  no  curiosity.  He  smiled,  and  there- 
after left  the  picture  alone,  even  to  the  extent  of  in- 
terested speculation.  Mary  had  scrupulously  absented 
herself  from  that  first  sitting;  but  after  it  was  over  and 
Marshby  had  gone  home,  Wilmer  found  her  in  the 
garden,  under  an  apple-tree,  shelling  pease.  He  lay 
down  on  the  ground,  at  a  little  distance,  and  watched 
her.  He  noted  the  quick,  capable  turn  of  her 
wrist  and  the  dexterous  motion  of  the  brown 
hands  as  they  snapped  out  the  pease,  and  he  thought 
how  eminently  sweet  and  comfortable  it  would  be 
to  take  this  bit  of  his  youth  back  to  France  with 
him,  or  even  to  give  up  France  and  grow  old  with 
her  at  home0 


174  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Mary,"  said  he,  "I  sha'n't  paint  any  picture  of 
you  this  summer." 

Mary  laughed,  and  brushed  back  a  yellow  lock  with 
the  back  of  her  hand.  "No,"  said  she,  "I  suppose  not. 
Aunt  Celia  spoke  of  it  yesterday.  She  told  me  the 


reason." 


"What  is  Aunt  Celia's  most  excellent  theory?" 

"She  said  I'm  not  so  likely  as  I  used  to  be." 

"No,"  said  Jerome,  not  answering  her  smile  in  the 
community  of  mirth  they  always  had  over  Aunt  Celia's 
simple  speech.  He  rolled  over  on  the  grass  and  began 
to  make  a  dandelion  curl.  "No,  that's  not  it.  You're 
a  good  deal  likelier  than  you  used  to  be.  You're  all 
possibilities  now.  I  could  make  a  Madonna  out  of 
you,  quick  as  a  wink.  No,  it's  because  I've  decided  to 
paint  Marshby  instead." 

Mary's  hands  stilled  themselves,  and  she  looked  at 
him  anxiously.  "Why  are  you  doing  that?"  she  asked. 

"Don't  you  want  the  picture? " 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  with  it?" 

"Give  it  to  you,  I  guess.  For  a  wedding-present, 
Mary." 

"You  mustn't  say  those  things,"  said  Mary,  gravely. 
She  went  on  working,  but  her  face  was  serious. 

"It's  queer,  isn't  it,"  remarked  Wilmer,  after  a 
pause,  "this  notion  you've  got  that  Marshby's  the  only 
one  that  could  possibly  do?  I  began  asking  you  first." 

"Please!"  said  Mary.  Her  eyes  were  full  of  tears. 
That  was  rare  for  her,  and  Wilmer  saw  it  meant  a 
shaken  poise.  She  was  less  certain  to-day  of  her  own 
fate.  It  made  her  more  responsively  tender  toward 
his.  He  sat  up  and  looked  at  her. 


THE  WIZARD'S  TOUCH  175 

"No,"  he  said.  "No.  I  won't  ask  you  again.  I 
never  meant  to.  Only  I  have  to  speak  of  it  once  in  a 
while.  We  should  have  such  a  tremendously  good 
tune  together." 

"We  have  a  tremendously  good  time  now,"  said 
Mary,  the  smile  coming  while  she  again  put  up  the  back 
of  her  hand  and  brushed  her  eyes.  ' '  When  you're  good/ ' 

"When  I  help  all  the  other  little  boys  at  the  table, 
and  don't  look  at  the  nice  heart-shaped  cake  I  want 
myself?  It's  frosted,  and  got  little  pink  things  all 
over  the  top.  There!  don't  drop  the  corners  of  your 
mouth.  If  I  were  asked  what  kind  of  a  world  I'd  like 
to  live  in,  I'd  say  one  where  the  corners  of  Mary's 
mouth  keep  quirked  up  all  the  time.  Let's  talk  about 
Marshby's  picture.  It's  going  to  be  your  Marshby." 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"Not  Marshby's  Marshby — yours." 

"You're  not  going  to  play  some  dreadful  joke  on 
him?  "  Her  eyes  were  blazing  under  knotted  brows. 

"Mary!"  Wilmer  spoke  gently,  and  though  the 
tone  recalled  her,  she  could  not  forbear  at  once,  in  her 
hurt  pride  and  loyalty. 

"You're  not  going  to  put  him  into  any  masquerade? — 
to  make  him  anything  but  what  he  is?" 

"Mary,  don't  you  think  that's  a  little  hard  on  an 
old  chum?" 

"I  can't  help  it."  Her  cheeks  were  hot,  though 
now  it  was  with  shame.  "Yes,  I  am  mean,  jealous, 
envious.  I  see  you  with  everything  at  your  feet — " 

"Not  quite  everything,"  said  Jerome.  "Not  quite. 
I  know  it  makes  you  hate  me." 

"No!  no!"  The  real  woman  had  awakened  in  her, 


176  VANISHING  POINTS 

and  she  turned  to  him  in  a  whole-hearted  honesty. 
"Only,  they  say  you  do  such  wizard  things  when  you 
paint.  I  never  saw  any  of  your  pictures,  you  know, 
except  the  ones  you  did  of  me.  And  they're  not  me. 
They're  lovely — angels  with  women's  clothes  on.  Aunt 
Celia  says  if  I  looked  like  that  I'd  carry  all  before  me. 
But,  you  see,  you've  always  been — partial  to  me." 

"And  you  think  I'm  not  partial  to  Marshby?" 

"It  isn't  that.  It's  only  that  they  say  you  look  in- 
side people  and  drag  out  what  is  there.  And  inside 
him — oh,  you'd  see  his  hatred  of  himself!"  The  tears 
were  rolling  unregarded  down  her  face. 

"This  is  dreadful,"  said  Winner,  chiefly  to  himself. 
"Dreadful." 

"There ! "  said  Mary,  drearily,  emptying  the  pods  from 
her  apron  into  the  basket  at  her  side.  "I  suppose  I've 
done  it  now.  I've  spoiled  the  picture."  . 

"No,"  returned  Jerome,  thoughtfully,  "you  haven't 
spoiled  the  picture.  Really  I  began  it  with  a  very 
definite  conception  of  what  I  was  going  to  do.  It  will 
be  done  in  that  way  or  not  at  all." 

"You're  very  kind,"  said  Mary  humbly.  "I  didn't 
mean  to  act  like  this." 

"No," — he  spoke  out  of  a  maze  of  reflection,  not 
looking  at  her.  "You  have  an  idea  he's  under  the 
microscope.  It  makes  you  nervous." 

She  nodded  and  then  caught  herself  up. 

"There's  nothing  you  mightn't  see,"  she  said,  proudly, 
ignoring  her  previous  outburst.  "You  or  anybody  else, 
even  with  a  microscope." 

"No,  of  course  not.  Only  you'd  say  microscopes 
aren't  fair.  Well,  perhaps  they're  not.  And  portrait- 


THE  WIZARD'S  TOUCH  177 

painting  is  a  very  simple  matter.  It's  not  the  black 
art.  But  if  I  go  on  with  this,  you  are  to  let  me  do  it  in 
my  own  way.  You're  not  to  look  at  it." 

"  Not  even  when  you're  not  at  work?  " 

"Not  once,  morning,  noon,  or  night,  till  I  invite 
you  to.  You  were  always  a  good  fellow,  Mary.  You'll 
keep  your  word." 

"No,  I  won't  look  at  it,"  said  Mary. 

Thereafter  she  stayed  away  from  the  barn,  not  only 
when  he  was  painting,  but  at  other  times,  and  Wilmer 
missed  her.  He  worked  very  fast,  and  made  his  plans 
for  sailing,  and  Aunt  Celia  loudly  bemoaned  his  stingi- 
ness in  cutting  short  the  summer.  One  day,  after 
breakfast,  he  sought  out  Mary  again  in  the  garden. 
She  was  snipping  coreopsis  for  the  dinner  table,  but 
she  did  it  absently,  and  Jerome  noted  the  heaviness 
of  her  eyes. 

"What's  the  trouble?"  he  asked,  abruptly,  and  she 
was  shaken  out  of  her  late  constraint.  She  looked  up 
at  him  with  a  piteous  smile. 

"Nothing  much,"  she  said.  "It  doesn't  matter. 
I  suppose  it's  fate.  He  has  written  his  letter." 

"Marshby?" 

"You  knew  he  got  his  appointment?" 

"No;  I  saw  something  had  him  by  the  heels,  but  he's 
been  still  as  a  fish." 

"It  came  three  days  ago.  He  has  decided  not  to  take 
it.  And  it  will  break  his  heart." 

"It  will  break  your  heart,"  Wilmer  opened  his  lips 
to  say;  but  he  dared  not  jostle  her  mood  of  unconsidered 
frankness. 

"I  suppose  I  expected  it,"  she  went  on.     "I  did 


178  VANISHING  POINTS 

expect  it.  Yet  he's  been  so  different  lately,  it  gave  me 
a  kind  of  hope." 

Jerome  started.  "How  has  he  been  different?"  he 
asked. 

"More  confident,  less  doubtful  of  himself.  It's  not 
anything  he  has  said.  It's  in  his  speech,  his  walk.  He 
even  carries  his  head  differently,  as  if  he  had  a  right  to. 
Well,  we  talked  half  the  night  last  night,  and  he  went 
home  to  write  the  letter.  He  promised  me  not  to  mail 
it  till  he'd  seen  me  once  more;  but  nothing  will  make 
any  difference." 

"You  won't  beseech  him?" 

"No.    He  is  a  man.    He  must  decide." 

"You  won't  tell  him  what  depends  on  it?" 

' l  Nothing  depends  on  it , "  said  Mary,  calmly.  ' l  Noth- 
ing except  his  own  happiness.  I  shall  find  mine  in 
letting  him  accept  his  life  according  to  his  own  free 
will." 

There  was  something  majestic  in  her  mental  attitude. 
Wilmer  felt  how  noble  her  full  maturity  was  to  be,  and 
told  himself,  with  a  thrill  of  pride,  that  he  had  done 
well  to  love  her. 

"Marshby  is  coming,"  he  said.  "I  want  to  show  you 
both  the  picture." 

Mary  shook  her  head.  "Not  this  morning,"  she 
told  him,  and  he  could  see  how  meagre  canvas  and 
paint  must  seem  to  her  after  her  vision  of  the  body  of 
life.  But  he  took  her  hand. 

"Come,"  he  said,  gently;  "you  must." 

Still  holding  her  flowers,  she  went  with  him,  though 
her  mind  abode  with  her  lost  cause.  Marshby  halted 
when  he  saw  them  coming,  and  Jerome  had  time  to 


THE  WIZARD'S  TOUCH  179 

look  at  him.  The  man  held  himself  wilfully  erect,  but 
his  face  betrayed  him.  It  was  haggard,  smitten.  He 
had  not  only  met  defeat;  he  had  accepted  it.  Jerome 
nodded  to  him  and  went  on  before  them  to  the  barn. 
The  picture  stood  there  in  a  favoring  light.  Mary 
caught  her  breath  sharply,  and  then  all  three  were 
silent.  Jerome  stood  there  forgetful  of  them,  his  eyes 
on  his  completed  work,  and  for  the  moment  he  had  in 
it  the  triumph  of  one  who  sees  intention  brought  to 
fruitage  under  perfect  auspices.  It  meant  more  to 
him,  that  recognition,  than  any  glowing  moment  of 
his  youth.  The  scroll  of  his  life  unrolled  before  him, 
and  he  saw  his  past,  as  other  men  acclaimed  it,  running 
into  the  future  ready  for  his  hand  to  make.  A  great 
illumination  touched  the  days  to  come.  Brilliant  in 
promise,  they  were  yet  barren  of  hope.  For  as  surely 
as  he  had  been  able  to  set  this  seal  on  Mary's  present, 
he  saw  how  the  thing  itself  would  separate  them.  He 
had  painted  her  ideal  of  Marshby;  but  whenever  in 
the  future  she  should  nurse  the  man  through  the  mental 
sickness  bound  always  to  delay  his  march,  she  would 
remember  this  moment  with  a  pang,  as  something 
Jerome  had  dowered  him  with,  not  something  he  had 
attained  unaided.  Marshby  faced  them  from  the 
canvas,  erect,  undaunted,  a  soldier  fronting  the  dawn, 
expectant  of  battle,  yet  with  no  dread  of  its  event. 
He  was  not  in  any  sense  alien  to  himself.  He  dominated 
not  by  crude  force,  but  through  the  sustained  inward 
strength  of  him.  It  was  not  youth  Jerome  had  given 
him.  There  was  maturity  in  the  face.  It  had  its  lines 
— the  lines  that  are  the  scars  of  battle;  but  somehow 
not  one  suggested,  even  to  the  doubtful  mind,  a  battle 


180  VANISHING  POINTS 

lost.  Jerome  turned  from  the  picture  to  the  man  him- 
self, and  had  his  own  surprise.  Marshby  was  trans- 
figured. He  breathed  humility  and  hope.  He  stirred 
at  Wilmer's  motion. 

"Am  I"— he  glowed— " could  I  have  looked  like 
that?"  Then  in  the  poignancy  of  the  moment  he  saw 
how  disloyal  to  the  moment  it  was  even  to  hint  at  what 
should  have  been,  without  snapping  the  link  now  into 
the  welding  present.  He  straightened  himself  and 
spoke  brusquely,  but  to  Mary: 

"I'll  go  back  and  write  that  letter.  Here  is  the  one 
I  wrote  last  night." 

He  took  it  from  his  pocket,  tore  it  in  two,  and  gave 
it  to  her.  Then  he  turned  away  and  walked  with  the 
soldier's  step  home  through  the  garden.  Jerome  could 
not  look  at  her.  He  began  moving  back  the  picture. 

"There!"  he  said,  "it's  finished.  Better  make  up 
your  mind  where  you'll  have  it  put.  I  shall  be  picking 
up  my  traps  this  morning." 

Then  Mary  gave  him  his  other  surprise.  Her  hands 
were  on  his  shoulders.  Her  eyes,  full  of  the  welling 
gratitude  that  is  one  kind  of  love,  spoke  like  her  lips. 

"Oh!"  said  she,  "do  you  think  I  don't  know  what 
you've  done?  I  couldn't  take  it  from  anybody  else. 
I  couldn't  let  him  take  it.  It's  like  standing  beside 
him  in  battle;  like  lending  him  your  horse,  your  sword. 
It's  being  a  comrade.  It's  helping  him  fight.  And  he 
will  fight.  That's  the  glory  of  it ! " 


A  MAN  OF  FEELING 

JOHN  SETON,  speaking  his  concluding  words  on 
the  lecture  platform  of  the  Club,  was  an  in- 
spiring sight  to  the  ladies  there  before  him,  he 
looked  so  strong,  so  fit  in  every  way  for  the  struggle 
he  had  predicted.  He  was  a  young  man  who  believed 
intensely  in  the  validity  of  his  subject,  though  he  had 
to  put  it  tentatively,  because  he  was  still  modest  enough 
to  wonder  sometimes  whether,  after  all,  he  had  found 
the  very  clearest  window  into  the  future.  So  he  had 
announced  himself  under  the  wavering  interrogation 
"Am  I  a  socialist?"  That  seemed  to  throw  the  burden 
of  proof  on  the  ladies;  and  they,  gazing  at  him  from 
under  furrowed  brows,  thought  they  knew:  he  looked 
too  honest  and  impulsive  not  to  take  a  stand,  too 
significant,  with  that  face  made  for  tenderness  and 
laughter. 

"Won't  you  come  home  with  us,  Mr.  Seton?"  asked 
a  matron,  in  the  congratulatory  crowd  about  him. 
"Come  and  have  a  cup  of  tea." 

He  was  about  to  answer  with  the  perfunctory  cour- 
tesy of  the  man  used  to  shunting  social  tributes,  when 
something  arrested  his  glance  and  held  it  for  a  second, 
inappreciable  but  significant.  Mrs.  Underhill  was  a 
lady  of  middle  height  and  of  a  certain  luxuriance  of 
type  which  she  had  subdued  to  the  note  of  the  perfect 
dress  she  wore,  a  smoky  gray  with  all  the  concomitants 

181 


182  VANISHING  POINTS 

of  exquisite  finishing,  fur,  and  the  gleam  of  the  neces- 
sary chain  that  held  her  lorgnon.  Her  color  was  high, 
though  not  in  the  least  coarsely  so,  and,  wholesome  as 
she  was,  she  breathed  out  an  inexplicable  hint  of  being 
at  the  mercy  of  her  own  emotions.  Seton,  looking  at 
her  in  the  instant  of  her  invitation,  thought  absently, 
with  that  part  of  his  mind  that  was  always  commenting 
on  the  byplay  of  life,  that  he  had  seen  precisely  her 
type  that  morning  at  a  tenement-house  door:  a  woman 
fresh  from  easy  battling  at  the  tub,  her  face  shining 
with  health  and  a  consciousness  of  warm  benevolence 
toward  her  man,  her  children,  and  beyond  them  such 
of  the  world  as  did  not  interfere  with  their  well-being. 
Two  Underhill  daughters,  easily  recognized  as  of  the 
mother's  blood,  but  of  a  reduced  type — warm-hearted, 
small-brained,  affectionate  creatures  waiting  to  do  their 
duty  to  the  world  through  some  form  of  child-nurture — 
stood  at  her  right  side,  their  hands  already  in  their 
muffs,  an  attitude  of  waiting  with  the  patient  symbolism 
of  wrists  in  fetters.  But  at  that  instant  of  looking, 
Seton  caught  something  like  a  message  that  did  not 
mean  to  be  a  message:  a  ray  from  the  blue  eyes  of  the 
other  daughter,  standing  at  the  left.  She  was  younger 
than  these  two  plump  summoners  to  the  dance  of  Me, 
taller  and  slender,  yet  with  every  implication  of  strength, 
of  a  clear  pink  and  white  skin,  hair  light  yellow,  and 
gray  eyes  that  told  overmuch  of  themselves,  and  a 
nature  that,  without  certainty  of  response,  meant  to 
tell  nothing  at  all.  Then  Seton  surprised  himself. 

"  Thank  you  very  much,"  he  said,  to  the  mother. 
"I  will." 

At  once  he  seemed  to  have  shuffled  off  his  answers 


A  MAN  OF  FEELING  183 

to  the  interrogative  clamor  that  might  not  have  been 
needed  if  anybody  had  really  listened  to  his  talk,  and 
made  way  for  the  ladies  through  the  perplexed  and 
surgent  throng.  He  nearly  always,  after  speaking, 
left  the  room — unless  the  audience  had  been  of  those 
whose  beliefs,  like  his  own,  were  partly  crystallized — 
with  an  impression  of  frowning  faces,  brows  tense  under 
the  impact  of  his  revelations;  and  it  was  tiring.  To- 
day he  hardly  cared  at  all.  He  was  able  to  throw  off 
the  aura  of  the  listening  ladies,  as  his  lungs  got  rid  of 
the  bad  air,  and  presently  he  was  in  the  car,  being 
driven  away. 

Their  progress  itself  offered  a  glimpse  into  the  exuber- 
ant benevolence  of  his  hostess.  Her  conversation, 
made  up,  at  this  juncture,  of  delight  in  Seton's  lecture 
and  wonder  how  any  one  could  possibly  live  in  the 
world  and  ignore  its  ill  condition,  was  punctuated  with 
little  shrieks  of  caution  to  the  chauffeur  not  to  run 
over  this  man  or  that  dog.  Her  attitude  of  mind 
seemed  to  be  that  of  one  who,  almost  alone  in  her 
perspicacity,  has  discovered  how  wilfully  determined 
everybody  is  to  run  over  everybody  else,  and  that  the 
only  possible  office  for  a  well-wishing  person  is  that  of 
the  voluble  censor,  the  champion  of  plain  decencies. 
Seton  gathered  that  she  was  a  lady  of  great  emotional 
leisure,  because  she  pounced  upon  the  evidences  of 
want  or  abuse,  and  waved  and  objurgated  at  things 
piteously  commonplace  in  the  every-day  economy, 
things  he  had  learned  not  to  score  his  mind  with,  lest 
he  should  go  really  mad.  But  Mrs.  Underbill  had 
plenty  of  indignation  and  ruth  to  pour  into  the  channel 
of  mere  noise.  Before  they  reached  the  stately  front 


184  VANISHING  POINTS 

that  walled  her  home,  Seton  had  learned  that  she 
abominated  persons  who  docked  the  tails  of  horses 
and  dogs,  used  an  overhead  check,  ground  down  the 
working-man,  and  did  not  remember  that  the  apple- 
woman  and  the  roasted-chestnut  man  had  human 
rights.  He,  too,  hated  the  sight  of  clipped  animals, 
and  was  pretty  sure  his  brother  was  his  brother;  but 
he  had  no  more  temptation  to  shriek  about  it  than  to 
go  into  a  library  where  he  might  study  the  causes  of 
things,  and  insist  on  chanting:  "This  is  a.  This  is  b. 
This  is  c."  To  all  the  mother's  gush  of  warning  and 
partisanship  and  robust  solace  of  kindness,  two  of  the 
daughters  added  little  agreeing  cries;  but  the  golden- 
haired  girl  sat  straight  and  said  nothing.  Seton  saw 
that,  for  some  reason,  she  could  not  by  nature  add  her 
comment  to  the  ever-springing  leafage  of  benevolence 
beside  her.  She  could  not  keep  telling  how  she  loved 
everybody  and  hated  to  have  them  hurt.  For  some 
reason,  she  could  not. 

When  they  had  entered  the  rather  dark  hall,  sombre 
with  the  hue  of  old  wood,  they  were  met  by  an  ava- 
lanche of  dogs — three  only,  but  dogs  so  glad  that  they 
hurled  themselves  into  a  miniature  exposition  of  all 
dogdom.  Seton  was  presented  to  them,  and  given 
instantly  an  impression  that  they  were  far  more  im- 
portant than  he,  and  would  continue  to  be,  unless  he 
should  have  the  ill  fortune  to  lose  a  hand  or  a  job. 
Then  the  benevolence  of  the  ladies  might  shift  tempo- 
rarily to  the  human  side.  The  dogs — two  Irish  terriers, 
very  fat,  Nick  and  Con,  and  a  bull,  Elizabeth — had 
been  out  nearly  all  the  afternoon,  Mrs.  Underhill  was 
assured  by  the  maid;  but  she  detected  disappointment 


A  MAN  OF  FEELING  185 

in  their  air,  and  called  upon  some  daughter  to  give  them 
one  more  run.  The  two  reproductions  of  the  mother 
type  were  immediately  glad  to  go,  and  Annette,  she 
who  seemed  to  be  a  sort  of  odd  one  hi  the  family  at- 
mosphere, went  with  Seton  and  her  mother  into  the 
library,  sumptuous  in  all  conventional  furnishings,  and 
gravely  made  the  tea.  Here  Mrs.  Underbill  told  him, 
as  if  the  confidence  were  his  by  right  because  he  was 
studying  the  reform  of  the  social  structure,  how  very 
painful  it  was  to  her  that  everybody  was  not  quite 
happy.  She  did  not  seem  a  lady  who  cared  much  about 
facts,  or  to  have  an  urgent  tendency  toward  their  ac- 
quisition. She  seemed  only  to  be  living  in  a  kind  of 
emotional  glow  generated  by  her  own  expression  of 
kindliness,  and  to  be  sensuously  alive  to  the  pleasures 
of  being  sorry  for  people.  Seton  found  impossible 
questions  popping  into  his  head  as  he  followed  her  lead, 
questions  as  crude  as  if  he  asked  her  what  her  income 
was,  or  whether  her  glossy  puffs  were  the  growth  of 
her  own  scalp  or  that  of  another.  His  unmanageable 
mind  wanted  to  pelt  her  with  inquiries  as  to  how  she 
could  look  so  cheerful  in  particular  when  she  felt  so 
low  about  the  general  scheme,  how  she  could  dwell  upon 
the  prevailing  gloom  with  such  roseate  unction.  And 
having  rattled  off  a  series  of  impudent  inquiries  like 
these,  his  mind  confided  to  him,  as  if  it  were  a  conclu- 
sion anybody  might  come  to,  that  she  had  acquired 
her  benevolence  only  after  her  children  had  grown  up. 
This  special  sort  of  exuberant  well-wishing  might  easily 
be  another  form  of  the  natural  passion  hovering  over 
a  child's  cot,  and  when  the  child  no  longer  needed 
nurture,  seeking  another  outlet.  While  these  extraneous 


186  VANISHING  POINTS 

conclusions  amused  themselves  together  in  his  mind, 
and  he  replied  mechanically  to  offers  of  sugar  and 
cream,  he  heard  the  maid,  leaving  the  room,  recalled 
by  his  hostess  with  a  requisition  for  some  special  sand- 
wich. 

"Cut  them,  Susan,"  she  was  specifying,  "very  thin." 

Susan's  neat  skirt  was  no  sooner  across  the  threshold 
than  Mrs.  Underhill  turned  to  him  with  one  of  her 
smiles,  half  indulgent  of  herself  as  a  woman  of  feeling, 
and  not  in  the  least  concerned  lest  you  find  her  so. 

"I  never/'  said  she,  "call  them  without  wondering 
at  the  injustice  of  it  all." 

Seton's  quick  brown  eyes  asked  for  him  exactly  what 
it  was  she  so  deplored,  and  she  answered  at  once: 

"Susan,  you  know.  I  called  her  by  her  Christian 
name.  We  must,  of  course — but  the  injustice  of  it! 
Why  isn't  she  calling  me  by  my  Christian  name?  Why 
am  I  not  calling  her  Miss —  Well,  I  don't  remember 
what  her  surname  is.  But  really  isn't  it  unjust?" 

Seton  said,  in  a  rather  dazed  way,  that  it  didn't  seem 
to  him  material. 

"Oh,  but  it  is  material,"  said  Mrs.  Underhill.  "I 
wonder  you  can  talk  as  you  have  this  afternoon,  I 
wonder  you  can  grasp  the  situation  as  you  do,  and  not 
see  how  material  it  is." 

Seton  only  thought  her  rather  queer;  but  what  he 
chiefly  wanted  was  to  get  the  young  Annette  to  himself 
in  some  corner  of  the  drawing-room  or  universe,  it 
didn't  matter  where,  and  talk  to  her  for  a  long  time. 
He  was  frankly  conscious  of  this:  that  there  had  never 
been  anybody  with  such  an  appeal  to  him,  such  a  trick 
of  direct  glances  and  grave  sudden  hidings  of  the  eyes, 


A  MAN  OF  FEELING  187 

with  such  an  implication  of  having  her  own  serious 
thoughts  and  nobody  to  help  her  out  when  they  grew 
too  troublesome.  He  even  had  a  desire  to  tell  Mrs. 
Underbill  that,  if  she  had  this  degree  of  longing  to 
spend  her  sympathy  on  a  world  in  need,  she  might  first 
lavish  a  little  of  it  on  her  young  daughter.  How,  he 
could  not  have  told.  Only  he  was  conscious  of  her  as  a 
cause.  But  now  Mrs.  Underhill  was  telling  him  how 
impossible  she  found  it  to  accept  the  world  as  it  is, 
and  how  she  was  almost  sure  she  was  a  socialist.  One 
could  hardly  help  being  who  had  any  eyes  or  ears;  yet 
her  husband  wouldn't  sympathize  in  the  least.  He 
never  had  sympathized. 

"Mother!"  said  the  girl,  in  a  low,  reminding  voice. 

Yet  when  her  mother  turned  at  the  sound  of  it, 
Annette  proffered  only  a  request  for  more  bread,  or 
sugar,  or  some  of  the  necessaries  of  the  tea  table,  where 
she  had  ceased  to  preside  when  the  tea  was  ready. 
Still,  the  tone  had  been  a  reminder.  He  knew  it.  And 
now  Mrs.  Underhill,  summoned  to  a  telephone  inter- 
view, left  them,  as  the  sandwiches  came  in,  and  Seton 
felt  that  his  chance  had  come,  and  turned  to  the  girl 
with  such  bright  eagerness  that  she,  turning  to  him 
with  just  such  an  involuntary  appeal,  yet  sat  with  lips 
parted,  not  speaking,  and  evidently  surprised  by  the 
ardency  of  his  challenge.  Now  Seton  had  nothing  to 
say.  The  trouble  was  he  had  everything  to  say.  The 
girl  herself,  that  was  his  instant  concern.  What  was  she? 
What  was  there  underneath  her  calm  that  clamored 
to  be  heard,  to  be  heard  by  him  especially?  She  was 
the  one  to  begin. 

"My  father — "  she  burst  forth,  with  an  instant 


188  VANISHING  POINTS 

brightening  of  the  eyes —  "he's  not — you  mustn't  think 
he  isn't  sympathetic." 

"No,"  said  Seton,  irrationally,  bent  only  on  reassur- 
ing her.  "I'm  sure  he  is." 

"It's  only  that" — she  seemed  to  seek  about  for  some- 
thing sufficiently  illuminating  and  yet  not  overdrawn — 
"he  can't  express  himself.  I  understand  him  per- 
fectly." 

"It's  a  mighty  big  question  for  men — men  of  affairs." 
Seton  tried  his  way.  "It  has  a  good  many  bearings. 
Those  of  us  that  talk — well,  we  can  make  a  very  pretty 
scheme  of  a  reconstructed  world;  but  I  wouldn't  be  the 
one  to  undertake  to  govern  it.  You  upset  so  many 
balances." 

But  she  was  not  listening  at  all.  Her  eyes  had  taken 
on  a  grave  solemnity.  They  questioned  him  as  if  they 
asked  one  thing  only:  whether  she  might  trust  him. 
Then,  having  drawn  her  conclusion,  she  spoke. 

"My  father  has  gone  away."  It  sounded  like  the 
statement  of  a  calamity.  "We  don't  know  where." 

There  seemed  to  be  nothing  he  could  answer. 
Strangely,  for  all  his  slight  knowledge  of  her,  it  was 
apparent  to  him  that  there  was  something  she  wanted 
him  to  do,  and  this  was  why  she  had  spoken.  That 
was  the  point  he  answered. 

"You  want  to  know,"  he  hazarded,  "you  want  to 
know  where  he  is?" 

Her  eyes  filled  with  tears,  so  slowly,  with  such  a 
contraction,  that  he  knew  how  it  hurt.  She  nodded 
slightly. 

"First  his  dog  went,  his  old  dog  Pat.  Then  father 
had  a  talk  with  me.  He  said  he  was  going  to  be 


A  MAN  OF  FEELING  189 

away  a  good  deal  now;  not  for  always,  but  simply  a 
good  deal.  I  asked  if  he  was  going  to  Europe,  and  he 
said  he  might  go,  but  not  at  once.  If  he  did  go,  he'd 
let  us  know,  so  we  might  know  where  to  find  him;  but 
at  present  he  should  simply  not  be  living  at  home." 

"But  surely — "  Then  Seton  changed  this,  from  a 
certainty  that  surely  the  man's  wife  would  know  where 
he  was,  to  the  more  gracious  supposition,  "And  your 
mother  of  course  knows  no  more  than  this?" 

"He  told  her  she  was  not  to  worry.  If  we  needed 
him,  he'd  be  here.  So  that  makes  me  think  he  isn't 
so  far  away." 

Her  slender,  ringless  hands  were  in  her  lap  now, 
interlacing  painfully,  and  by  their  grip  on  each  other 
counselling  her  to  keep  emotion  curbed.  Seton  was 
bitterly,  extravagantly  sorry  for  her.  And  he  was  not 
astonished  at  this  challenge  of  his  help  and  sympathy, 
because,  as  strong  as  his  certainty  that  she  would  not 
for  worlds  have  bared  her  heart  to  chance  confidence, 
was  his  feeling  that  it  had  been  perfectly  sane  and  nat- 
ural to  do  it  now.  But  he  was  throwing  his  mind  into 
the  channel  of  practical  conjecture. 

"May  I  ask  you" — it  seemed  possible  to  ask  any- 
thing— "if  your  father  is  in  business  of  any  sort?" 

He  had  inevitably  gone  there  for  the  secret,  and  she 
answered  him  at  once. 

"No;  papa's  retired.  He  made  a  lot  of  money — 
Underhill  and  Green — cloth,  you  know,  cotton-mills — 
and  he  went  out  three  years  ago.  No,  he  isn't  worried 
about  money.  He's  just  gone  away." 

Had  she  been  less  immediate  to  his  concern,  he  would 
have  wanted  to  reply:  "Yes,  but  people  don't  disappear 


190  VANISHING  POINTS 

for  nothing.  Don't  look  any  further.  You'll  find  some- 
thing you'd  rather  not  hear."  But  she  had  thrown 
over  him  the  spell  of  her  sincere  belief,  and  he  answered 
reflectively,  "I  see,"  though  really  he  saw  nothing  at 
all  but  her  candid  eyes.  Now  she  was  gathering  at  once 
and  casting  at  him  the  real  burden  of  her  argument. 

"  And  what  I  wanted  is  this:  you  go  about  in  all  sorts 
of  places — " 

"I  have  to,  you  know,"  he  put  in,  because  it  seemed 
for  the  first  time  unusual  to  choose  to  go  about  in  diverse 
places.  "If  you're  on  a  newspaper  you  have  to." 

"Oh,.  I  know.  And  if  you  hadn't  gone  to  the  town 
where  they  had  the  prize-fight  you  wouldn't  have  been 
there  to  look  into  the  strike.  Well,  you're  likely  to 
go  anywhere,  aren't  you?" 

"To  the  ends  of  the  earth,"  said  Seton  gravely.  He 
took  a  solemn  pleasure  in  meaning  he  would  go  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth  for  her,  and  knowing  she  could  not 
by  any  possibility  guess  he  meant  it. 

"And  so,"  said  she,  in  the  accelerated  tone  that 
would  have  been  less  distinguishable  than  a  whisper 
even  to  any  one  just  outside  the  sill,  "if  you  should 
see  my  father — he's  not  very  tall,  and  he's  got  a  scar 
right  across  his  face  here — he  got  it  in  Germany — I 
want'  you  to  tell  him  to  write,  to  please,  please 
write." 

Seton  accepted  it,  the  extravagant  romance  of  it, 
the  remote  possibility  that  he  should  come  by  chance 
upon  a  father  not  very  tall,  with  a  scar  across  his  face, 
and  bowed  gravely,  as  if  such  nebulous  commissions 
were  part  of  every  day's  work. 

"You  want  to  see  him  like  the  dickens,"  he  hazarded, 


A  MAN  OF  FEELING  191 

and  she  hastened  to  correct  him,  with  a  quick  loyalty 
to  the  absent. 

"  No,  no.  That  isn't  it.  If  he  needs  to  be  away,  why, 
he  has  to  be.  I  feel  that.  Only  if  I  could  know — if  I 
could  know  just  where — if  anything  should  happen  to 
him — '  Here  her  face  was  suffused  again,  and  the 
like  of  those  other  painful  tears  came  and  gave  her 
eyes  a  sombre  pathos. 

Seton  hardly  knew  what  he  was  to  think  of  a  father 
who  could  wilfully  ignore  such  grief.  Then  all  at  once 
Mrs.  Underhill  had  done  with  her  interview  and  the 
dogs  with  their  walk,  and  daughters,  mother,  and 
dogs  came  in  together,  all  a  voluble  interchange  of 
comment  on  a  world  made  for  the  comfort  of  dogs. 
Mrs.  Underhill  distributed  lumps  of  sugar,  and  confided 
to  Seton,  while  the  dogs  crunched  with  dripping  jaws, 
that  it  was  of  no  use  in  that  house  to  think  dogs  could 
be  brought  up  as  dogs.  She  knew  it  all,  the  whole 
horrid  formula:  one  meal  a  day  and  dog-biscuit  at 
night,  and  how  did  we  think  we  should  like  to  be 
treated  like  that?  Then  she  conveyed  a  terrier  up  her 
silken  and  very  sloping  lap,  and  Seton  had  an  absurd 
feeling  that  she  was  going  to  ask  in  a  minute  whether 
he  didn't  think  it  a  wrong  to  call  dogs  by  then*  first 
names.  And  while  the  other  daughters  had  their  tea 
and  the  dogs  were  crowded  with  sippets  and  lumps, 
Annette  sat  still,  her  grave  eyes  not  regarding  what  was 
evidently  the  accustomed  scene,  but  looking  very  tired. 

When  Seton  rose  to  take  his  leave,  Mrs.  Underhill 
at  once  invited  him  to  dinner  for  the  following  night. 
She  was  very  selfish,  she  said.  She  had  a  thousand 
things  to  ask  him  that  he  hadn't  so  much  as  touched  on 


192  VANISHING  POINTS 

in  his  lecture.  She  supposed  the  upshot  would  be  that 
when  he  really  told  her  all  the  reasons  why  he  was  a 
socialist,  she  should  be  able  to  find  out  whether  she  was 
one,  too.  Seton  had  an  engagement  for  the  next  even- 
ing— the  theatre,  with  another  man;  but  he  promptly 
cancelled  it  and  expressed  his  great  pleasure  in  coming 
here  to  dine.  When  he  left  the  house  he  felt  like  shak- 
ing himself  like  a  dog  running  out  of  the  water;  the 
'saccharine  benevolences  dripping  from  that  hospitable 
roof  seemed  to  have  drenched  him  through  and  through, 
and  his  accustomed  habit  of  thought  felt  cold  and 
slippery.  It  was  enough,  he  said,  with  a  rueful  head- 
shake  at  the  moon,  looking  so  incongruous  there  at  the 
end  of  the  street,  to  make  you  forswear  brotherly  love, 
heroic  doses  were  so  weakening.  Then  his  mind  leaped 
to  Annette,  so  vivid  in  her  appeal  to  him  while  they 
were  alone,  so  pathetic  in  her  lassitude  when  she  gave 
him  a  hand  at  parting,  and  he  knew  he  could  breast 
even  those  tumultuous  seas  of  fraternity  to  find  her. 

He  sat  more  than  once  at  Mrs.  UnderhnTs  table;  but 
the  impression  of  that  first  hour  was  only  intensified. 
Annette's  confidence  was  not  repeated.  Her  face  never 
even  seemed  to  interrogate  him  for  news.  She  had  ap- 
parently given  the  conduct  of  his  adventure,  his  task  of 
finding  a  man  with  a  scar  across  the  face,  into  his  own 
hand,  and  was  waiting  with  &  hopeful  confidence  until 
he  should  have  done  something  with  it.  He  saw  that, 
and  saw  also,  with  a  compassionate  wonder  whether  it 
might  be  hard  for  her,  how  foreign  she  was  to  the  at- 
mosphere of  the  house,  how  gently  passive  in  it.  For 
once  inside  the  door,  he  felt  as  if  he  had  embarked  in 
a  tossing  sea  of  violent  kindliness,  throwing  him  from 


A  MAN  OF  FEELING  193 

one  wave  to  another  of  pity  for  this  and  indignation 
over  that.  Annette,  in  her  little  boat  on  the  same  sea, 
had  the  air  of  riding  passively  and  gracefully  over  the 
waves,  the  exhilaration  of  being  so  exceedingly  warm- 
hearted, which  prevailed  with  Mrs.  Underhill,  and  the 
depression  because  other  people  were  not  warm-hearted 
enough.  This  idea  of  the  boat  got  such  hold  on  him 
that  hi  the  midst  of  his  most  breathless  tasks,  when  he 
had  scant  time  to  think  of  extraneous  things  and  Ann- 
ette least  of  all,  she  was  so  moving  to  him,  he  would 
suddenly  have  the  vision  of  her  in  the  tossing  skiff,  her 
hands  folded,  her  lips  a  little  apart,  her  eyes  fixed  un- 
fadingly  on  some  point:  perhaps  the  indeterminate 
shore  where  walked  a  man  with  a  scar  across  his  face. 
He  wondered  if  she  were  unhappy  beyond  the  reaches 
of  that  longing  for  her  father.  He  knew  he  should  have 
been  wretched  to  the  point  of  breaking  amid  that  chorus 
of  love  to  humanity,  in  which,  though  all  his  mind  had 
been  travelling  for  the  last  three  years  toward  more 
just  conditions  for  the  race,  he  could  not  join.  He  was 
a  stanch  lover  of  dogs;  but  the  Underhill  dogs  he  hated 
with  the  nervous  aloofness  you  feel  toward  the  inno- 
cent cause  of  any  electric  storm.  They  had  all  the 
silken  cushions  they  chose  to  take,  chairs  were  sacred 
to  them,  their  least  preference  was  consulted  hi  the 
matter  of  food,  and  a  fusillade  of  endearment  rang 
through  the  house.  Yet  they  were  not  inordinately 
spoiled.  They  were  good,  self-respecting  dogs  at  heart, 
placed  hi  a  ridiculous  position.  He  had  an  idea  that  if 
he  could  take  them  into  the  open  for  a  walk,  with  a 
camp-fire,  and  a  bone  to  gnaw,  and  a  cuff  here  and  an 
ear-rubbing  there,  they  would  get  back  to  dogdom  once 


194  VANISHING  POINTS 

more  and  he  could  like  them.  But  with  their  pottering 
strolls  and  leashed  security,  their  pampered  instincts, 
they  were  getting  "soft",  and  he  felt  a  disproportionate 
rage  over  the  wrong  done  them  by  idle  womankind. 
And  then  he  would  chide  himself  and  ask  what  could 
you  do  with  a  dog  in  the  city?  You  had  to  guard  and 
leash  him.  But  nevertheless,  whenever  he  saw  them 
in  their  cloistered  ease,  he  found  himself  saying,  "Poor 
devils",  and  wishing  they  could  smell  a  little  life. 

He  had  not  been  lecturing  for  some  time  now.  That 
was  an  intermittent  affair,  wedged  in  where  he  could 
place  it,  between  stunts  of  journalism.  It  had  come 
about  from  the  book  he  had  written,  wherein  he  had 
tried  to  formulate  his  own  miserable  certainty  that 
industrial  conditions  are  all  wrong  in  some  such  way 
as  would  make  the  acquiescent  stop  to  wonder,  as  he 
had,  and  then  perhaps  give  a  push  to  the  old  chariot  of 
privilege.  The  book  had  been  well  written,  and  it 
had  somehow,  by  that  mysterious  law  we  call  luck, 
found  its  way,  like  a  text-book  of  a  sort,  into  the  hands 
of  women  who  want  the  latest  thing  in  brains.  There- 
fore it  was  to  clubs  chiefly  he  had  spoken. 

And  now  one  day  he  was  summoned,  by  a  letter 
written  in  a  small,  rather  cramped  hand  and  expressed 
in  the  phraseology  of  business,  to  a  street  he  knew  in  a 
clean,  philistine  slab  of  the  city,  where  lodging-houses 
abounded,  and  all  occupations  jostled  one  another  and 
let  one  another  live  in  peace,  because  there  was  no 
time  to  be  inordinately  curious  or  particular.  With  all 
these  people,  the  fight  was  on:  with  the  landladies  for 
the  renting  of  their  rooms,  with  the  lodgers  to  keep 
the  place,  whatever  it  was,  that  gave  them  the  money 


A  MAN  OF  FEELING  195 

to  hire  the  rooms.  When  you  got  into  this  quarter  of 
the  city  you  were  "up  against"  the  hand-to-hand 
struggle  for  bed  and  board  with  no  luxuries.  These 
were  not  the  submerged  and  hopeless.  They  were  the 
decent  working  men  and  women  who  see  no  prospect 
but  work,  and  ask  no  favors  but  an  honest  wage.  At 
any  other  moment  Seton  might  not  have  regarded  the 
letter,  though  it  carried  an  intimate  authority  of  its 
own,  as  some  letters  do;  but  the  times  were  drab-colored 
and  had  been  for  a  week.  Annette  had  been  away  at 
a  country  house,  and  he  had  somehow  fancied  that  his 
welcome  with  Mrs.  Underhill  had  paled  its  lustre  by  a 
degree.  He  wondered  if  the  sum  of  benevolence  was 
not  to  shine  on  him  with  its  full  continued  radiance, 
and  that  made  him  nervous.  For  there  was  Annette. 

And  having  an  hour  at  the  end  of  the  day,  he  took 
his  stick  and  walked  briskly  down  to  the  brick  house, 
like  its  neighbors  in  the  dull  street,  rang  the  bell,  and 
asked  for  Mr.  C.  T.  Charles.  There  was  no  hesitation. 
He  was  in,  the  bewigged,  enormous  landlady  said,  and 
would  Seton  "go  right  up".  That  seemed  to  be  the 
custom  of  the  house,  and  it  was  also  a  manifest  cruelty 
to  expect  any  landlady  of  that  bulk  to  essay  even  two 
flights  in  heralding;  so  Seton  thanked  her,  ascended  the 
stairs  not  too  briskly,  lest  he  remind  her  of  her  own  quies- 
cence, and  knocked  at  a  yellowed  door.  It  was  not 
opened  at  once,  and  he  had  time  to  observe  how  exactly 
the  gilt-scrolled  paper  patterned  all  the  other  paper  of 
such  houses,  when  there  was  a  stirring  within,  the  door 
opened,  and  he  found  himself  confronting  a  thin,  gray- 
haired  man  with  a  scar  from  his  cheek-bone  nearly  to 
the  corner  of  his  mouth.  But  that  was  not  so  significant. 


196  VANISHING  POINTS 

He  had,  under  bushy,  unkempt  brows,  withdrawn  as 
if  by  the  shrinking  of  age,  Annette's  eyes.  That  settled 
it.  Altogether  it  was  what  could  be  called  a  lovable 
face.  All  the  lines  in  its  thin  dry  ness  were  kind,  and 
the  mouth,  not  really  hidden  by  a  short  gray  mustache, 
was  tenderness  itself.  So  instantly  grounded  was 
Seton' s  conviction  that  this  was  the  man  with  the 
precise  scar  that  he  would  not  have  been  surprised  if 
his  summoner's  first  question  had  been,  "  How's  An- 
nette? "  But  the  man  only  opened  the  door  wider,  and 
said  in  a  gentle  voice  that  had  fallen  into  a  nervous 
habit  of  haste: 

"Mr.  Seton,  this  is  very  obliging  of  you.    Come  in." 

So  Seton  went  in,  and  they  sat  down  in  two  horribly 
constructed  oak  chairs,  upholstered  in  a  plush  that  was 
much  indebted  to  time  for  fading  it.  And  as  if  he  had 
been  summoned  by  Annette's  old  reference  to  him,  a 
gaunt  Irish  terrier  poked  forward  from  some  corner, 
smelled  at  Seton's  trousers,  suffered  his  touch,  and  then 
cast  himself,  with  a  sigh,  at  his  master's  feet.  Seton 
was  aware  that  his  host  was  regarding  him  with  a  scru- 
tiny that  momentarily  banished  the  lustre  of  his  eyes 
and  drew  them  to  a  glittering  smallness. 

"I've  never  seen  you  so  close,"  said  the  man,  in  im- 
mediate explanation,  as  if  he  knew  he  was  staring  and 
formulating.  "I've  heard  you  lecture." 

"We  haven't  met?"  said  Seton,  interrogatively.  He 
knew  they  hadn't,  because  Annette's  sparse  description 
had  now  become  the  most  valid  evidence. 

"No.  I've  read  your  book,  too.  You're  a  young 
man." 

Seton  had  had  that  fact  handed  him  in  various  forms: 


A  MAN  OF  FEELING  197 

sometimes,  when  it  concerned  his  reactionary  theories, 
as  damaging  to  him;  once  or  twice,  when  he  wanted 
promotion,  as  something  in  his  favor.  But  this  man 
stated  it  very  neutrally,  and  he  felt  bound  for  some 
reason  to  tell  him. 

"  Twenty-six." 

"Ah!   You've  got  it  all  before  you." 

This  seemed  to  be  neither  commiseration  nor  envy. 
It  was  merely  the  weighing  of  chances,  Seton  saw,  and 
he  nodded  in  answer. 

"Yes,"  he  said.    "I  hope  there's  a  good  deal  before 


me." 


"I  might  as  well  come  to  the  point,"  said  the  other. 
He  was  holding  the  corrugated  arms  of  his  chair  tightly 
with  slender  hands,  as  if  that  were  a  form  of  controlled 
nervousness  he  might  allow  himself.  "You're  a  busy 
man.  Are  you  attached  to  your  profession?" 
"Journalism?" 

"Yes.  Are  you  attached  to  it? " 
"Why!"  said  Seton,  doubtfully,  "why!" 
That  was  all  he  could  say  for  the  moment.  It  was 
so  complex  a  thing.  He  liked  the  strain  and  "go"  of 
it,  the  scant  praise  and  sudden  rough  commendation 
when  he  had  handed  in  a  good  story.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  was  conscious  of  an  undercurrent  of  deter- 
mination to  write  other  things  when  he  should  have 
learned  to  write  better  and  of  assuaging  that  soft  spot 
in  him  by  seeing  if  the  world  need  be  so  stupid  in  ar- 
ranging its  affairs.  As  he  still  kept  his  puzzled  silence, 
the  other  spoke  again,  with  the  air  of  putting  down 
a  second  card,  not  having  perhaps  played  quite 
fairly. 


198  VANISHING  POINTS 

"I  ought  to  explain  myself  a  little.  You  can't  be 
expected  to  act  in  the  dark.  Now,  you're  a  socialist." 

Seton  said  nothing.  His  book  told  that,  he  knew; 
and  his  spoken  utterances  implied  it. 

"So'm  I,"  said  the  host,  "so'm  I.  I  don't  say  you 
made  me  one,  but  you  helped  me  along.  Your  book 
was  so  simple.  It's  elementary.  That's  what  I  need. 
And  it's  all  so  puzzling." 

He  looked  at  Seton  with  a  frank  implication  of  not 
being  wise,  not  being  able  to  think  out  anything,  but 
just  of  suffering.  That  was  the  last  thing  he  meant 
to  imply.  He  would,  Seton  knew,  not  only  because  he 
was  manly,  but  because  he  was  sensitive  to  the  verge 
of  lost  control,  have  realized  that  to  obtrude  your  own 
sense  of  the  wretchedness  of  the  world  on  a  world  that 
has  as  much  as  it  can  bear,  is  only  to  inject  another 
drop  of  ink  into  waters  already  murky.  His  delicate 
face,  ready,  it  might  be,  to  quiver,  told  that,  yet  the 
line  of  his  mouth  added  the  balancing  determination 
that  something  must  be  done.  Seton  had  many  a  time, 
in  moments  of  low  vitality,  cursed  his  own  futile 
wretchedness  over  the  suffering  of  the  world;  but  the 
strength  of  his  youth  prevailed,  and  he  had,  in  another 
day,  with  a  whiff  of  air,  overborne  it  and  started  again 
with  no  less  irrational  courage  on  the  path  to  better- 
ment. But  here  was  a  man,  he  saw,  who  had  suffered, 
in  a  life  more  than  twice  as  long  as  his,  an  equal  misery, 
and  had  now  no  compensatory  youth  to  help  him 
through. 

" Things  are  in  a  bad  way,"  the  man  was  saying, 
as  if  he  didn't  really  know  how  to  put  into  words  the 
enormity  of  what  rested  upon  him,  and  had  to  make  it 


A  MAN  OF  FEELING  199 

as  simple  as  possible.  "It  used  to  hound  me  down. 
Always  hounded  me.  I  thought  one  time  'twould  hound 
me  out  of  life." 

"That's  the  way,"  Seton  confirmed  him.  "That's 
the  way  it  takes  us." 

"I  thought  then  'twas  something  we'd  got  to  bear. 
I  thought  'twas  the  state  of  the  world.  Folks  said 
'twas  the  will  of  God.  I  never  thought  that,  I  guess. 
If  I  had,  I  shouldn't  have  been  able  to  serve  under  a 
God  like  that.  Well,  sir,  if  there's  a  remedy- 
He  paused  and  his  eyes  came  out  of  their  hiding  and 
besought  Seton  to  say  again  that  there  was  one. 

"There's  got  to  be,"  said  Seton.  It  was  all  he  could 
honestly  swear. 

The  other  man  nodded,  as  if  he  thanked  him  for 
even  so  small  a  grace. 

"Of  course  I  don't  altogether  see  it,"  he  owned. 
"I'm  old-fashioned.  I've  spent  my  brains,  what  I  had 
of  'em,  in  making  the  thing  go.  Business,  you  know, 
that  sort  of  thing.  Of  course  I  don't  see  how  you're 
going  to  reckon  with  human  nature.  Seems  to  me  the 
man  we're  throttling  now,  when  we  give  him  the  chance 
to  live  and  breathe  and  get  some  blood  into  him — seems 
to  me  he's  just  as  like  as  not  to  turn  into  the  kind  that 
throttles  the  man  under  him.  I  don't  know.  I  have  a 
kind  of  a  theory  that  the  Napoleons  and  the  robbers 
and  the  grafters,  rich  or  poor,  are  going  to  keep  on 
being  born  for  quite  a  spell — Well,  well,  we  won't  talk 
of  that.  Tires  my  head.  I  try  not  to  think  of  'em." 

His  harassment  over  the  unequal  burdens  of  life 
came  out  suddenly  all  over  him  in  the  rigidity  of  his 
controlled  figure,  the  appeal — almost  articulate — of 


200  VANISHING  POINTS 

his  glance,  and  Seton  had  an  answering  pang  of  wretched 
fellowship,  a  savage  desire  to  forbid  his  making  them 
irretrievably  miserable  together.  But  by  a  big  effort 
the  man  had  evidently  pulled  himself  up  out  of  the 
slough  where  they  both  knew  they  must  not  flounder. 

'So,"  said  he,  "I've  come  to  a  conclusion.  I  can't 
do  anything.  Don't  see  what  there  is  to  be  done  that 
won't  upset  the  kettle  of  fish  on  the  other  side.  But 
your  book  makes  it  pretty  plain  to  me  that  it's  the 
System  we've  got  to  fight.  That's  what's  the  matter — 
the  System." 

"Yes,"  said  Seton,  emerging  into  the  clearer  light 
of  the  few  certainties  he  had,  "it's  the  System." 

' '  Now  we're  getting  somewhere. ' '  He  was,  outwardly 
at  least,  unshaken  by  his  sense  of  horror  at  the  vision 
of  temporary  wrong.  "Now,  I've  made  my  money 
by  the  System.  I'm  going  to  spend  it — what  I  don't 
owe  to  other  people — I'm  going  to  spend  it  fighting  the 
System  I  made  it  by." 

Was  Annette  one  of  the  other  people?  Was  it  the 
exuberant  trio,  the  satiated  dogs,  that  were  to  have  had 
the  spending  of  it?  Seton  made  no  answer,  nor  did  the 
other  man  seem  to  expect  one. 

"So,"  he  began  again,  in  exactly  the  same  fragmen- 
tary fashion,  "when  I  saw  you,  I  saw  you  knew  there 
was  a  remedy.  You  were  cocksure.  Now  I  want  to 
buy  your  time.  You  can  put  it  in  as  you  like,  lectures, 
books,  research — I  don't  confine  you  to  this  country: 
go  where  you  please.  Only  I'll  back  you  to  do  what  I 
haven't  the  youth,  the  strength — brains,  too,  sir,  the 
brains — to  do  for  myself.  How's  that?  What  do  you 
say?" 


A  MAN  OF  FEELING  201 

He  was  regarding  Seton  now  with  a  sudden  smile  that 
illuminated  his  face  into  an  unmistakable  beauty. 
Seton  was  silent  for  a  moment  from  the  inability  to 
get  hold  of  it  all.  Yet  it  seemed  very  reasonable,  the 
man  himself  was  so  simple,  so  frank,  so  true. 

"To  fight  the  System?"  Seton  repeated,  stupidly. 

The  other  man  nodded,  with  a  look  of  almost  savage 
will  in  the  compression  of  his  lips. 

"The  System/'  said  he,  as  if  he  were  toasting  it. 
"That's  what's  the  matter.  Stamp  it  out.  I'm  back- 
ing you." 

Then  suddenly  Seton's  wits  came  with  a  rush,  and 
he  knew  one  only  question  had  to  be  answered  first. 

"I  have  a  message  for  you,"  said  he.  "It's  from 
Annette." 

The  other  man  sprang  up  so  violently  that  the  dog 
at  his  feet,  thrown  as  suddenly  out  of  his  dream,  sprang 
also  and  sat  down  a  yard  away,  fixing  his  master  with 
reproachful  eyes.  Seton  went  on  at  once  in  a  swift 
flow  of  narrative.  He  told  what  had  led  him  to  that 
house.  He  made  no  secret  that  it  was  not  the  mother's 
invitation,  but  the  unconscious  call  of  Annette's  face. 
And  ending,  he  threw  at  the  other  man  the  question  he 
thought  he  had  the  necessity  if  not  the  right  to  ask. 
They  couldn't  give  him  so  many  keys  unless  they  gave 
him  the  key  to  the  house  itself. 

"What  made  you  come  down  here?" 

Underhill  took  the  question  in  a  perfectly  good  part, 
but  the  answer  seemed  to  be  beyond  him.  He  had 
stepped  thoughtfully  back  to  his  chair;  and  the  dog, 
waiting  for  that  only,  dropped  again,  his  head  at  his 
master's  toe,  as  if  to  say  if  there  were  further  mobiliza- 


202  VANISHING  POINTS 

tion  he  should  at  least  know  it  as  soon  as  anybody. 
Underbill  seemed  to  be  thinking.  He  looked  at  Seton 
and  his  face  worked. 

"I  can't!    I  can't!" 

That  was  all  he  seemed  able  to  say. 

"Your  daughter  wants  you  tremendously/'  Seton 
ventured. 

"Yes."  This  came  in  a  quick  burst  of  what  might 
have  been  longing  for  her,  a  confident  pride  in  her  affec- 
tion for  him,  and  an  accepted  grief  that  things  had  to 
be  as  they  were.  "  If  it  was  Annette  alone,  I  could  take 
Annette  to  live  with  me!"  There  he  paused,  looked 
most  hopelessly  at  Seton,  and  shook  his  head.  "No," 
he  said,  "you  can't  understand  it.  Nobody  could. 
I'm  a  queer  Dick.  What's  the  use?  " 

But  Seton  was  bound  to  understand.  For  the  sake  of 
Annette  and  her  beseeching  eyes  he  meant  to  push  his 
way  at  once  inside  this  defended  pale.  The  phrase  of 
Mrs.  Underhill  herself  leaped  into  his  mind. 

"I  see,"  he  said;  "you  have  to  get  away  by  yourself. 
It's  not — not  sympathetic." 

Underhill  clutched  at  the  word,  but  in  a  special  sense. 

"That's  it,"  said  he,  "it's  too  damned  sympathetic. 
I  can't  stand  it,  Seton.  Can't  stand  the  outcry.  That's 
what  it  is  all  the  time,  outcry.  It's  about  everything. 
If  you've  got  a  wound  you  bandage  it  up,  don't  you? 
You  try  to  forget  it.  Well,  they  don't.  They  can't. 
My  wife's  a  good  woman — two  girls  just  like  her — 
well,  they're  always  seeing  where  folks  bleed  and  telling 
you  of  it,  and  I  can't  stand  it,  Seton,  can't,  to  save  my 
life  I  can't.  So  Pat  and  I  came  off  down  here." 

Seton  understood  so  poignantly  that  he  had  nothing 


A  MAN  OF  FEELING  203 

to  say.  The  father  of  the  family  had  not  been  able  to 
endure  the  tossing  of  the  boat  on  the  emotional  waves. 
And  in  a  moment  Underhill  seemed  to  pass  him  an- 
other key — a  smaller  one,  but  of  use. 

"You  won't  understand  it,  but  I  actually  got  to 
hating  the  dogs.  Then  I  saw  'twas  time  to  go,  Pat 
and  I.  I'm  very  fond  of  dogs,  but  I  can't  stand  outcry. 
Can't,  can't.  Don't  you  see,  when  folks  are  as  extreme 
as  that,  they  don't  leave  you  anything.  You've  got  to 
scream  as  loud  as  they  do.  I've  often  felt  it  about 
the  children.  My  wife  lavished  things  on  'em  so  she 
didn't  leave  me  anything  to  do.  I  should  have  had 
to  gild  'em  all  over,  or  bellow,  if  I  wanted  to  tell  'em 
they  were  good  girls.  All  but  Annette.  Annette's 
the  one.  She'd  understand.  Always  has.  Well!" 

His  eyes,  like  Annette's  own,  were  appealing  for 
something.  Was  it,  Seton  wondered,  that  he  should 
not  leave  him  to  the  loneliness  of  being  queer  and  old, 
of  having  no  valid  ground  to  stand  on  because  custom 
and  ethics  themselves  might  be  warning  him  back  to 
the  tossing  boat?  And  Seton  laughed.  That  seemed  to 
be  the  best  thing  he  could  do,  to  confirm  the  other 
man's  title  to  this  poor  little  refuge  he  had  snatched. 

"They're  terribly  kind  ladies,"  said  he.  "I  guess 
we're  reactions,  you  and  I." 

Underhill's  worn  face  looked  pathetically  grateful; 
but  he  threw  off  even  that  appeal  in  a  trembling  haste. 

"How  is  it,"  said  he,  "about  the  other  thing?  Going 
to  let  me  back  you?" 

Seton  shook  his  head.  He  was  sure  of  that,  and  yet 
he  couldn't  stop  to  talk  about  it. 

"I  don't  know  how  to  put  it,"  said  he,  "but  a  chap's 


20*  VANISHING  POINTS 

got  to  stand  on  his  own  feet.  If  I  were  a  little  more 
stuck  on  myself!  No,  I  can't  do  it.  I  should  get  punky 
in  a  year.  What  shall  I  tell  Annette?  " 

Her  father  considered. 

"You  tell  Annette/'  said  he,  "tell  her  I'm  all  right. 
She's  a  good  girl.  I  miss  her  like  the  Old  Harry.  But 
I  don't  see  how  I  can  let  her  in.  It's  a  queer  position — 
making  her  keep  a  secret  from  her  mother.  When  she's 
a  little  older  she  can  choose.  Maybe  she  might  choose 
to  come  to  me.  Or  if  she  married,  maybe  she'd  marry 
a  good  chap  and  I'd  drop  in." 

Seton  got  out  of  his  chair  with  a  bound,  disconcerting 
to  Pat,  the  lover  of  ordered  ways. 

"I'll  tell  you  this,"  said  he:  "You  won't  drop  in. 
You'll  come  and  stay  for  good.  I'll  tell  you  that  right 


now." 


THE  LANTERN 

MARSHALL  BRUCE  and  his  wife,  Janie,  lived 
in  a  flat  ingeniously  contrived  to  be  hot  in 
summer  and,  by  a  defective  system  of  heating, 
very  cold  in  winter.  They  had  perched  there  for  three 
years  during  the  weaving  of  their  fortunes,  sometimes 
hilariously  intent  on  the  uncouth  advantages  of  the 
place,  overlooking,  as  it  did,  a  corner  of  life  far  removed 
from  their  own,  except  in  anxious  work  and  vagueness 
in  regard  to  the  next  month's  rent.  That  was  like  hav- 
ing an  uncomfortable  seat  at  a  dreary  realistic  play. 
Or  again  when  the  fount  of  hope  got  choked  and  ceased 
temporarily  to  bubble,  they  recoiled  from  the  tawdri- 
ness  of  it  all,  and  wondered  whether  it  would  not  have 
been  better  for  Marshall  to  keep  his  professional  post 
in  the  little  academy,  and  for  Janie  to  go  on  teaching 
literature  under  him,  rather  than  to  vault  the  cruel 
barbed  wire  into  journalism,  there  to  throw  and  be 
overthrown. 

On  this  July  evening,  the  flat  was  feeling  the  heat. 
Janie  sat  in  the  kitchen  commanding  the  court  where 
her  neighbors  had  settled  themselves  for  prolonged 
hours  of  unreserved  revel,  challenging  their  own  jaded 
inner  forces  to  counteract  the  atmospheric  enemy 
without.  They  laughed  loudly  at  intervals,  in  momen- 
tary uplift  when  some  one  of  them,  Janie  knew  through 
previous  observation,  made  a  foray  upon  a  neighboring 

205 


206  VANISHING  POINTS 

drug  store,  and  returned  with  dishes  of  ice  cream  the 
mind  shuddered  to  contemplate.  She  knew  exactly 
how  they  looked,  the  men  coatless,  the  women  slat- 
ternly in  lingerie  waists  profusely  trellised  with  a 
"letting-in"  of  cheap  lace,  and  the  children,  innocent 
of  the  dictum  that  boys  and  girls  should  be  in  retreat 
by  the  time  it  is  dark  under  the  table,  alternating  the 
wail  of  fretfulness  with  the  shriek  of  an  unlovely  mirth. 
This  was  not  one  of  the  times  when  Janie  could  regard 
them  all  joyously  as  a  picture  of  life,  or  warmly  as  a 
part  of  the  great  family  wherein  they  seemed  to  be 
workers  of  a  degree  only  less  humble  than  her  own. 
She  was  affronted  by  the  city  summer,  tired  of  pro- 
longed care,  and  she  could  but  think  of  a  circle  in  an 
ingeniously  contrived  inferno  where  lost  spirits  suffered 
not  only  the  torture  of  their  own  habitat  but  that  of 
the  outcry  from  the  one  below.  In  a  street  not  far 
away  a  talking  machine  started  on  its  interminable 
jargon,  chiming  in  terrifying  commentary  with  her 
own  mental  lamentations.  She  would  not  have  been 
surprised  if  the  talking  machine  had  broken  suddenly 
into  Brocken  cries. 

Proofs  of  a  modest  story  long  ago  paid  for  and  the 
proceeds  eaten  up,  lay  on  the  table  before  her,  ready 
to  be  stamped  and  mailed,  and  she  knew  Marshall,  in 
the  front  room,  was  poring  over  the  last  of  his  masterly 
series,  a  more  exacting  task,  and  therefore  to  be  carried 
on  in  the  fractionally  less  torrid  portion  of  the  house. 
Janie  always  insisted  that  she  preferred  the  kitchen  for 
her  work  because  it  seemed  more  secluded,  and  Marshall 
innocently  agreed.  He  had  not  even  known  how  she 
had  held  her  breath  and  guarded  him  through  the  year 


THE  LANTERN  207 

when  he  was  getting  his  material  for  this  set  of  maga- 
zine articles  on  Elisha  Porson,  the  bogy  of  all  com- 
mercial circles,  execrated  by  thousands  who  had  served 
him  and  then  gone  under  when  they  attempted  to 
seek  out  the  sources  of  the  golden  flood  for  which  they 
dug  the  channel.  There  was  to  be  no  overflow,  they 
found.  The  drops  were  all  to  run  swiftly  to  one  hoard. 
So  the  articles,  now  appearing,  had  proved.  They 
were  in  effect  an  attack  on  Porson,  his  methods  and 
his  personal  integrity,  and  through  him,  an  onslaught 
upon  modern  business. 

Marshall,  when  he  had  been  asked  to  ride  forth  for 
the  slaying  of  Porson,  had  felt  a  high  commercial 
triumph  of  his  own,  and  with  that  the  righteous  valor 
of  the  knight-errant.  Janie  had  known  he  was  the 
man  commissioned  to  do  a  big  deed.  That  first  flame 
of  eagerness  had  lighted  her  through  three-quarters 
of  the  task.  What  Marshall  felt  about  it  now,  what 
immediate  force  was  hurrying  him,  she  did  not  know. 
Of  one  thing  she  was  sure:  he  thought  with  her  of  the 
tangible  reward  if  the  articles  ultimately  "made  good". 
For  they  were  lifting  an  obscure  magazine  to  an  amaz- 
ing circulation,  and  the  publishers  were  just  men.  They 
would  double  and  treble  what  he  had  been  promised 
in  advance,  and  that  would  mean  a  move  from  the 
flat  overlooking  the  court,  even  a  month  in  England 
benignly  beckoning  them,  and,  most  of  all,  more  work. 
But  of  these  palliations  to  the  task  Janie  was  not  think- 
ing to-night  as  she  leaned  back  in  her  chair,  one  arm 
lying  along  the  table,  her  fingers  holding  the  pen.  She 
was  thinking  of  life  itself,  the  web  embroidered  by 
figures,  Porson  and  these  uncouth  creatures  in  the 


208  VANISHING  POINTS 

court,  though  it  looked  less  to  her  like  a  fabric  than  it 
sometimes  did,  a  fabric  stirred  by  a  battling  wind  so 
that  the  figures  themselves  moved  purposely.  It  was 
in  some  manner  alive,  though  formless,  a  savage  power 
bent  on  ruin. 

Marshall,  in  the  other  room,  pushed  back  his  chair, 
and  she  came  to  herself  with  an  instant  call  upon  her 
every-day  look  of  watchful  sympathy.  She  was  on 
guard,  ready  to  do  him  service  from  filling  his  pen  or 
pipe  to  speeding  off  on  desperate  foraging  flights  for 
the  material  he  might  suddenly  lack.  She  heard  his 
slippered  feet  along  the  corridor,  and  then  saw  him 
before  her,  strong,  flushed,  splendid  to  her  gaze  with 
the  distinctions  she  loved  in  him:  the  kind  gray  eyes 
set  wide  apart,  the  warm  hair  tumbling  over  his  fore- 
head and  his  comprehensive  look  of  youth  and  power. 
Tired  as  he  was,  he  looked  for  the  moment  instinct 
with  triumph. 

"Well,"  said  he,  "it's  done." 

"Done!"  The  echo  was  not  interrogative.  It 
seemed  rather  a  wondering  comment  on  such  a  fact. 

He  began  a  tattoo  on  the  oven  of  the  gas  stove,  and 
she  noted  idly  how  fine  his  hand  was,  used  to  athletic 
tasks  and  fitted  to  hold  the  pen. 

"They'll  set  it  up  at  once,"  she  said,  languidly. 

"Yes.  I  shall  have  the  proof  this  week.  Then  we've 
done  with  Porson — done  with  him,  done  with  him. 
Vakj  Elisha  Porson!  Avaunt!  Get  out!  You  have 
served  your  turn.  The  tale  of  your  iniquities  is  com- 
plete, and  it  now  remains  for  you  to  get  the  monopoly 
of  sackcloth  and  ashes,  and  we  will  hie  us  from  your 
crumbling  ruins  to  other  jobs."  He  was  fantastically 


THE  LANTERN  209 

gesticulating  over  the  sink  where,  in  a  moment,  he 
proposed  to  let  the  water  run  through  the  filter  pre- 
paratory to  a  cooling  draught,  when  he  turned  to  her 
for  a  responsive  glance.  He  noted  her  pallor,  the  dark 
circles  on  her  cheek,  and  sprang  to  her  with  dismay. 
"Why,  old  girl,"  said  he,  "you're  done  up." 

Tears  were  squeezing  themselves  out  under  her 
dropped  eyelids. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "I've  known  myself  to  be  ruggeder. 
Don't  hug  me  here,  Marsh.  The  court '11  see  us.  There ! 
I  told  you.  Hear  them  yell.  Come  off  into  the  den, 
and  we  can  talk." 

His  arm  about  her,  they  did  go,  and  in  the  den,  lit- 
tered still  with  his  cast-off  manuscript,  he  turned  the 
light  up  to  see  if  she  really  looked  as  alarmingly  bad 
as  he  feared.  She  was  on  the  sofa  now,  her  head  thrown 
back  against  her  lifted  arms.  He  took  his  own  chair 
and  watched  her,  a  frown  between  his  anxious  eyes. 
In  a  minute  she  laughed. 

"I'll  tell  you  what  it  is,  Marsh,"  she  said.  "It's 
Porson.  This  is  his  revenge." 

"You  got  too  tired  over  him.  You've  let  down, 
now  the  race  is  over.  Take  it  as  I  do.  Don't  say,  what 
a  devil  of  a  time  we've  had  with  him.  Say,  we've  done 
with  him." 

"I  feel  as  if  we  never  should  be  done  with  him." 
She  opened  her  eyes  heavily  for  a  moment,  and  closed 
them  again  because  they  had  fallen  on  his  completed 
work.  Something  had  to  remind  her  at  every  turn  of 
Elisha  Porson,  the  adversary  of  mankind  as  she  had 
grown  to  think  him,  and  so  her  adversary,  also.  But 
with  her  husband's  anxious  eyes  upon  her  she  was 


210  VANISHING  POINTS 

bound  to  help  him.  "  Don't  you  find  yourself  crushed 
by  all  this  investigation,  Marsh?"  she  asked.  " Some- 
how sapped — depleted?" 

He  was  frowning  at  the  effort  to  understand. 

"No,"  he  said,  at  once.  "I  feel  as  a  lawyer  does 
after  he's  won  a  nasty  case.  He  hasn't  enjoyed  the 
evidence;  but  it's  means  to  an  end.  It  buys  conviction. 
It  serves  justice.  And  for  him  it  spells  triumph." 

"I  can't  think  of  the  triumph  just  this  minute.  I'm 
certain  we've  learned  things  we  wish  we  hadn't  known." 

"Nonsense!  The  things  are.  If  they  exist,  why  not 
know  them?  " 

"It  seems  as  if  what  we  call  business  is  a  fight — a 
terrible  fight,  too  terrible  to  look  on  at." 

"It  is."  The  man's  confirming  dictum  came  quick 
and  sharp  on  the  heels  of  her  wavering  commentary. 

"I  feel  as  if  money  were  evil." 

"So  the  preacher  says,"  Marshall  echoed  gayly, 
"the  root  of  all  evil — or  is  it  the  love  of  it?  I  bet  we 
could  use  a  pocketful  of  it,  allee  samee. 

"Do  you  know  what  Person  has  made  me  see?" 

"He's  made  me  see  a  number  of  things.  One  is, 
that  he'll  be  the  better  for  a  taste  of  brimstone.  I 
could  wish  he'd  had  it  years  ago." 

"He's  made  the  world  hideous." 

"Oh,  come,  Janie!  not  the  world." 

"Yes,  the  world,  because  it  wants  to  get  on.  And  we 
shall  be  just  like  him  the  minute  we  begin  to  fight  for 
money  to  lift  us  above  other  people — well,  the  people 
out  there."  She  did  not  need  to  indicate  the  court, 
even  with  a  glance.  The  discord  of  acclamation  was 
floating  toward  them  through  the  flat,  and  both  of 


THE  LANTERN  211 

them  thought  absently  that  it  was  hailing  a  new  con- 
signment of  ice-cream.  "I'm  convinced  that  Person 
hasn't  one  decent  humane  impulse  left." 

"Well,  if  he  has,  I've  failed  to  spot  it.  However, 
let's  be  charitable.  Let's  say  he  never  had  any  to 
begin  with." 

"He  can't  have  been  a  monster.  Remember,  he 
supported  his  mother " 

"'From  that  date/"  Marshall  quoted,  rhetorically, 
"'the  date  of  his  obtaining  a  position  hi  the  shoe- 
store,  his  mother  ceased  sewing  for  a  living,  and  young 
Elisha  supported  her  in  a  modest  way,  always  better- 
ing with  his  rising  fortunes. ": 

"That's  it,"  said  Janie.  "He  was  human  to  start 
with,  but  now  he's  made  himself  into  a  machine.  It 
goes  whirling  over  the  green  grass  of  the  world,  cutting 
off  heads." 

"Can't  put  that  in,"  said  Marshall,  who  had  cocked 
his  head  with  an  air  of  listening  toward  business  ends. 
"Too  flowery!" 

"And  the  worst  of  it  is,  he's  made  me  see  he's  not 
an  exception.  He's  only  noteworthy  because  he's  got 
more  brain  than  the  others — more  of  that  hideous 
power  of  tending  money  and  making  it  breed.  The 
men  that  fought  him — they're  the  same  kind,  only 
they  didn't  win." 

"The  fierce  light  that  beats  upon  a  financier,"  re- 
marked Marshall. 

But  she  was  moving  him.  He  might  stave  her  off, 
yet  he,  too,  felt  a  decent  recoil  after  the  bad  company 
they  had  been  keeping.  He,  too,  was  morally  jaded, 
though  he  would  not  own  it.  He,  as  became  a  man, 


212  VANISHING  POINTS 

was  taking  "the  world  but  as  the  world",  and  yet  his 
longings  clove  to  the  green  hills  of  peace.  His  homesick 
eyes  could  not  discern  them  in  the  distance.  The  world 
seemed  suddenly  turned  into  a  great  industrial  battle- 
field where  homely  virtues  were  trodden  out  under  the 
foot  of  the  mercenaries  hired  to  fight  for  some  Napoleon 
no  more  greedy  then  they,  but  more  masterful. 

"  We've  got  our  punishment  for  meddling  with  him," 
said  Janie,  bitterly.  "  We've  painted  a  portrait,  and 
the  picture  is  going  to  stay  with  us.  It's  hanging  right 
here  on  our  wall.  You  see  it.  I  see  it.  The  eyes  follow 
us,  even  when  we  aren't  looking  at  it." 

" Don't,"  said  Marshall,  involuntarily. 

"Oh,  it's  a  true  portrait.  I  own  that.  We've  caught 
the  exact  likeness — of  a  man  who  isn't  a  man  any 
more.  He's  a  horribly  intelligent  force.  He  can  make 
me  believe  all  the  other  men  that  copy  him  and  fight 
him  are  hideous  forces,  too.  We  shall  be,  Marsh,  if  we 
try  to  keep  on  our  feet  in  this  awful  scramble  and  rush. 
Why,  I  don't  dare  to  wish  we  could  go  to  Europe  or 
even  move  out  of  here,  because  it  means  fighting  for 
money " 

The  bell  in  the  hall  rang  with  a  jarring  dissonance. 
Janie  started  to  her  feet,  and  Marshall  threw  down  his 
paper  knife  and  went  to  the  tube. 

"Yes,"  she  heard  him  say.  "Who  is  it?  Come  up. 
Fifth  floor." 

Almost  immediately  he  had  returned  to  her  and 
arrested  her  flight  to  the  dark  back  parlor  where,  re- 
membering her  disarray,  she  was  betaking  herself. 
His  face  itself  stopped  her.  It  was  blazing,  with  what 
emotion  she  could  not  yet  tell,  wonder,  perhaps  bitter- 


THE  LANTERN  213 

ness,  an  ironic  gayety.  His  hand  was  heavy  on  her 
wrist. 

"Who  do  you  think  it  is?"  he  asked,  rapidly. 

She  shook  her  head. 

"Porson  himself." 

"Elisha  Porson?" 

He  nodded,  the  sparkling  commentary  of  his  face 
intensifying. 

"  The  fool!  "he  breathed. 

Slow,  rather  cautious  steps  were  nearing  on  the  stairs. 

"What  have  I  told  you  about  the  cleverest  of  men? 
Take  them  out  of  their  own  grooves  and  they  go  to 
pieces.  He  knows  leather,  he  knows  the  market;  but 
here  he  is  walking  straight  into  my  mouth  to  lie  down 
in  it." 

"What  does  he  want,  Marsh?"  she  whispered.  All 
her  own  acumen  had  deserted  her.  She  asked  the  ques- 
tion as  simply  as  a  child. 

"Want?"  Marshall  repeated,  savagely.  A  terrible 
anticipatory  triumph  was  in  his  look.  "He's  read  the 
first  number,  perhaps  the  second,  and  he  wants  to 
buy  me  off — the  fool!" 

The  steps  halted  at  the  door.  Janie  fled  into  the 
back  room  and  sank  on  a  chair.  She  was  effectually 
awakened,  as  if  by  a  piercing  call  from  some  emergency. 
It  was  reasonable  to  her,  as  to  her  husband,  that  Porson 
should  want  to  bribe  them,  and  even  that  he  should 
innocently  try  it.  She  saw  her  husband  with  the  hoard 
of  gold  laid  open  before  him,  and  knew  proudly  he 
would  refuse  to  look. 

Marshall  threw  open  the  door. 

"Come  in,  Mr.  Porson,"  she  heard  him  say. 


214  VANISHING  POINTS 

Then  the  door  closed  and  the  varying  steps,  Person's 
shuffling  slightly  as  those  of  an  old  man  not  very  pains- 
takingly shod,  and  her  husband's  decisive,  as  if  all  his 
youth  and  scorn  of  paltering  found  expression  there, 
came  in  together. 

"Sit  here,"  said  Marshall,  again  abruptly,  and  took 
his  own  place  at  the  desk. 

The  gas,  whether  by  Marshall's  intention  or  not, 
shone  full  on  Person's  face,  and  Janie,  bending  forward 
there  in  the  dark,  trembled  at  it,  seeing  it  with  an  added 
significance  in  the  light  of  her  own  home.  She  had 
studied  his  portrait  in  its  various  stages  of  development; 
the  boy  in  the  daguerreotype,  with  the  inconsequent 
mouth  and  smooth  hair,  the  youth  beginning  to  show 
the  peering  shrewdness  of  his  later  years  as  he  realized 
where  accumulation  might  place  him,  the  middle-aged 
man  with  the  mean  lines  of  greed  and  the  rigorous  ones 
of  mastery  about  his  eyes  and  mouth,  and  the  man 
himself  as  he  footed  it  down  town  in  the  morning,  his 
only  walk  for  the  day  before  his  task  of  incubating 
the  eggs  of  riches  and  fighting  off  the  others  who  would 
steal  his  nest.  She  and  Marshall  had  worked  so  long 
over  that  composite  portrait  that  Person's  features  had 
acquired  for  them  an  exaggerated  significance,  and 
now  that  he  had  walked  into  their  very  presence,  her 
heart  beat  hard  at  the  thought  that,  despite  hospitable 
honor,  they  might  enrich  the  image  by  one  line  more. 
He  laid  his  battered  hat  on  the  table,  the  tile  that  fig- 
ured invariably  in  the  caricatures  of  him,  and  passed  a 
knotted  hand  wearily  through  his  thin  hair  with  the 
gesture  fitted  to  locks  that  had  begun  by  being  thick. 
He  started  a  little,  and  lifted  his  head  alertly. 


THE  LANTERN  215 

"Who's  in  there?"  he  asked,  pointing  a  thumb  at 
the  back  room. 

"My  wife,"  said  Marshall,  at  once. 

"I  prefer  to  see  you  alone,"  Porson  announced,  with 
the  ah*  of  one  who  is  accustomed  to  getting  what  he 
asks  for.  It  was  not  the  full,  noble  note  of  command. 
His  high  querulous  voice  would  never  compass  that. 
It  bespoke  rather  the  habit  of  a  dominance  tedious  but 
necessary. 

At  once  Janie,  from  no  considered  impulse  except 
as  the  result  of  the  directness  of  her  own  nature,  bent 
always  on  the  straightest  path,  rose  and  came  forward 
into  the  circle  of  light.  Marshall  got  up  and  with  a 
somewhat  accented  courtesy  to  mark  his  tenderness 
for  her  and  insure  her  against  rebuff,  drew  forward  a 
chair.  She  stood  still  in  the  illuminated  radius,  a  small 
figure,  her  pale  golden  hair  drooping  about  her  child- 
like face,  and  looked  at  Porson,  half  with  an  inevitable 
aversion  and  half  appealingly  because  she  wanted  very 
much  to  stay.  Porson  regarded  her  for  a  moment, 
not,  Marshall  angrily  noted,  as  if  he  saw  her  distinctive 
charm,  but  as  if  she  were  a  figure  in  the  path.  He  got 
up  then,  as  if  by  an  afterthought,  not  grudgingly, 
but  because  he  seemed  to  be  remembering  that  rising 
to  greet  a  woman  was  a  custom  mysteriously  decreed, 
and  one  that,  leading  to  unknown  ends,  he  might  not 
neglect. 

"How  do  you  do?"  he  conceded,  in  his  rasping  voice. 
But  he  looked  at  Marshall  immediately  with  the  un- 
altered requirement  that  the  figure  should  be  removed. 

"My  wife  is  my  literary  partner,"  said  Marshall, 
answering  the  glance.  "She  helps  me  collect  my 


216  VANISHING  POINTS 

/ 

material  and  pronounces  on  the  stuff.  It's  as  much 
her  work  as  mine." 

Janie,  who  knew  him  so  well,  read  in  his  air,  rather 
than  his  voice,  the  uneasiness  of  thinking  it  would  be 
incalculable  disappointment  if  Porson  should  refuse 
the  gauge  thrown  down  and  say  he  would  not  speak 
at  all.  She  took  the  matter  into  her  own  hands. 

'Til  go  out,  Marshall,"  she  said  quickly.  "Mr. 
Porson  won't  mind  my  being  in  the  next  room,  even  if 
I  do  hear.  Our  flat  is  so  tiny,"  she  explained  to  the 
visitor,  with  an  unwilling  smile — it  came  before  she 
had  time  to  think  how  she  hated  Porson — "  we  hear  from 
one  end  of  it  to  the  other." 

At  that  Porson  turned  his  small  eyes  on  her  and 
seemed,  for  purposes  of  his  own,  to  estimate  and  accept 
her. 

"Well!  well!"  he  said,  with  an  impatient  movement 
of  the  hands.  "Well!  well!  But"— he  raised  the  dis- 
cordant voice  a  little — "this  interview  is  confiden- 
tial." 

"Certainly,"  said  Janie,  with  dignity.  "That  is 
understood." 

She  withdrew  again  into  her  solitude  of  the  back 
room  and  sat  there  in  a  palpitating  intentness. 

"I  don't  know,"  Marshall  was  saying,  obstinately. 
"I  don't  know  whether  it's  confidential.  It  depends 
on  the  sort  of  thing  you've  got  to  say." 

Porson  stopped  him  by  another  of  those  rather  un- 
certain gestures  of  the  hands  that,  wavering  as  they 
were,  certainly  had  the  effect  of  power.  He  leaned 
forward  in  his  chair  now  and  let  the  dramatic  hands 
drop  between  his  knees,  while  he  reflected. 


THE  LANTERN  217 

"You — "  he  began  slowly,  "you've  printed  two 
numbers. " 

"Yes/' said  Marshall. 

There  was  an  ugly  frown  between  his  brows.  Janie, 
seeing  it  spring  there  and  knit  itself,  thrilled  with 
admiration  of  him  and  eagerness  of  sympathy  with 
what  he  would  say.  Porson  would  propose  some 
unworthy  pact,  and  her  husband  would  repudiate  it. 
She  was  glad  to  be  before  the  stage  of  that  fine  drama. 

Porson  looked  up  at  Marshall  with  one  of  his  quick 
glances  that,  however  much  they  shifted,  seemed  to 
gather  whatever  they  needed  in  their  course. 

"How  much  you  got  in  type  now?"  he  asked. 

Marshall  laughed  a  little  with  that  ironic  note  fitted 
to  his  scornful  look. 

"Mr.  Porson/'  said  he,  "what  have  you  come  to 
ask?" 

Porson  straightened  now  and  gazed  at  him.  To 
Janie,  from  her  oblique  vantage  ground,  he  looked  like 
a  shambling  old  man.  Marshall,  confronting  the  direct 
beam  of  the  small  eyes,  found  it  a  holding  power. 

"The  question's  here,"  said  Porson.  He  opened  his 
mouth  slightly,  tightened  the  skin  of  his  cheek  and 
rubbed  it  with  a  forefinger,  a  trick  Marshall  knew  in 
sundry  farmers  of  his  acquaintance.  He  saw  at  once 
that  it  was  a  characteristic  gesture,  and  put  it  down  in 
his  mental  notebook.  "I  took  up  your  two  first  num- 
bers," said  Porson,  simply,  "the  first  of  the  evening, 
and  read  'em  through.  I  thought  I'd  drop  in  before 
it  went  any  further." 

"Anything  wrong  with  my  facts?"  asked  Marshall 
incisively. 


218  VANISHING  POINTS 

Person  seemed  about  to  answer,  but  he  drew  himself 
back  as  if  with  a  tardy  recognition  that  this  was  a 
species  of  tribunal,  and  that  he  was  not  obliged  to 
incriminate  himself. 

"Well,"  he  said,  with  deliberation,  "I  don't  know's 
I've  got  anything  to  say  on  that  score.  What  I  pitched 
upon " 

Marshall  involuntarily  glanced  toward  the  inner 
room,  and  Janie,  though  she  knew  he  could  not  see  her, 
nodded  at  him  in  a  community  of  delighted  interest 
at  Person's  way  of  expressing  himself.  They  had 
both  known  he  had  a  vocabulary  of  country  phrases. 
He  was  confirming  their  cleverness  with  every 
word. 

"What  I  pitched  upon  was  this.  You  say  towards 
the  end  of  number  two  that  later  you'll  go  into  partic- 
ulars about  the  Blackstone  Avenue  land  grab,  and  how 
Person's  head  clerk  got  ahead  of  him  for  once.  Now  I 
take  it  you  make  quite  a  handle  of  that?" 

Marshall  nodded,  watching  him. 

"I  go  into  it  rather  fully,"  he  said. 

"What  article's  it  come  in?" 

"Number  four." 

"Well,  Mr.  Bruce,"  said  Porson,  looking  him  in  the 
face,  "I  want  you  to  cut  that  out." 

Marshall  laughed.  Janie  knew  what  he  thought  he 
had  discovered.  She,  too,  had  hit  upon  it.  Old  Porson 
must  have  a  very  human  foible  at  the  bottom  of  his 
bag  of  tricks.  He  was  not  only  a  money  king,  avid  of 
accumulation  and  the  spread  of  his  base  regnancy; 
he  was  vain.  He  could  not  endure  to  have  the  world 
told  that  any  man  had  got  ahead  of  him. 


THE  LANTERN  219 

"I  should  be  much  obliged/1  he  was  continuing, 
"if  you'd  tell  me  how  you  went  into  that." 

" Delighted,"  said  Marshall,  dryly.  "I've  got  the 
article  right  here."  He  opened  a  drawer,  and  after  a 
frowning  search  brought  out  several  crumpled  galleys 
of  proof.  These  he  whirled  into  order,  and  gave  them 
to  Person,  pointing  out  the  significant  paragraphs. 
Person  read  slowly  and  painstakingly.  Marshall, 
watching  him,  felt  convinced  that  if  these  had  been 
columns  of  figures,  he  could  have  run  over  them  lightly 
with  an  accustomed  ease;  but  even  the  plainest  litera- 
ture was  dubitable  ground. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  at  last.  "Yes.  I  thought  that's 
the  way  you'd  fix  it.  Well,  Mr.  Bruce,  you've  got 
your  facts  pretty  clear." 

Marshall  nodded. 

"Yes,"  he  echoed.  "I've  got  my  data.  You  see, 
Mr.  Porson,  men  in  your  occupation  keep  leaving 
documentary  evidence  behind  them.  There  aren't 
any  suppositions  in  these  articles  of  mine.  They're 
columns  of  cold  facts.  You've  furnished  the  incidents 
yourself.  I've  only  trailed  along  after  you  and  picked 
'em  up." 

But  Porson  did  not  seem  to  hear.  He  was  considering, 
thinking  out  the  best  move  to  make.  Finally  he  nodded 
slightly,  as  if  in  confirmation  to  himself,  and  sat  up. 

"Well,"  said  he,  "I  guess  I'll  have  to  tell  you  the 
story  of  that  deal." 

Marshall  smiled  a  little.  The  amended  story  would 
mean  that  Porson  was  explaining  himself.  That  was  an 
immense  triumph  touching  a  man  who,  whatever  the 
popular  outcry,  never  answered.  To  explain  meant  to 


220  VANISHING  POINTS 

excuse  himself,  in  a  way  to  beg  for  milder  verdicts. 
If  a  man  had  wrought  that  upon  old  Porson,  he  had 
done  well. 

Porson  was  drumming  noiselessly  now  upon  the 
desk,  keeping  time  as  he  talked,  and  Marshall  watched 
the  knotted  fingers.  Janie,  out  of  her  cage,  never 
turned  her  eyes  from  the  old  man's  face. 

"You  say  he" — Porson  touched  the  bundle  of 
disordered  proof  lightly  with  a  species  of  disparagement 
not  superb  enough  for  scorn — "you  say  here  my  clerk, 
Luther  Tileston,  got  ahead  of  me.  You  say  he  found 
out  before  I  did  that  Blackstone  Avenue  was  going 
through  the  old  Dumping  Fields,  and  he  cut  in  ahead  of 
me  and  bought  up  that  land.  Well,  Mr.  Marshall, 
you're  wrong.  I  bought  that  land." 

"Oh,  no,  you  didn't,"  said  Marshall,  his  mind  on  the 
trapping  of  vanity.  ' '  The  deeds  stood  in  his  name.  He 
made  a  fortune.  His  wife  and  daughter  are  living  on 
it  to-day." 

"Yes,"  said  Porson,  mildly,  as  if  in  tolerance  of  in- 
complete methods.  "But  I  furnished  the  money. 
I  bought  in  Tileston's  name." 

"What  for?" 

"It  didn't  do  for  me  to  go  into  it  unless  I  did  it  some 
such  way.  I'd  begun  to  be  a  marked  man—  "  a  slight 
assertiveness  animated  his  voice.  "If  I'd  gone  into  it 
in  the  light  of  day,  there' d  have  been  a  hundred  others 
ready  to  jump  and  pick  up  all  the  land  near  by.  I 
wanted  that,  too,  but  I  hadn't  the  means  I  have  now. 
I  wasn't  prepared  to  take  it  till  I  knew  whether  they 
were  going  to  extend  the  avenue  to  the  river  front  and 
make  the  drive." 


THE  LANTERN  221 

"The  rest  was  sold  later/'  said  Marshall,  vaguely. 
He  was  not  yet  sensitized.  "You  did  buy  that.  But 
Tileston  bought  the  first  lot.  He  got  the  Dumping 
Fields." 

"Don't  I  tell  you  I  bought  in  his  name?"  inquired 
Porson. 

"Well,"  said  Marshall,  unwillingly  convinced,  "so 
you  want  me  to  make  the  correction?  " 

"1  want  you  to  drop  the  whole  matter." 

"Why?" 

There  was  a  long  pause,  and  Janie,  watching,  saw 
Person's  face  concentrate  as  if  he  were  travelling  a 
difficult  way,  bordered  by  sadder  or  more  serious  things. 
Suddenly  he  came  back. 

"Tileston,"  said  he,  "was  an  honest  man." 

"Why,  yes,"  Marshall  returned,  "nobody's  ever 
known  anything  against  Tileston.  Except  that  land 
coup,  of  course.  But  I  suppose  he  had  a  friend  in  the 
city  council.  I  suppose  he  knew  pretty  well  which  way 
the  boom  was  going,  and  it  seemed  to  him  venial  to 
snap  something  up." 

"He  didn't  have  any  friend  in  the  city  council," 
said  Porson,  patiently.  "I  had  the  friend — more  than 
one  of  'em.  I  sent  Tileston  abroad  on  business  at  the 
time  of  that  deal.  He  knew  no  more  about  it  than 
the  dead.  And  a  week  after  he  got  home  he  died  him- 
self." 

"So,  if  you  bought  for  him,  as  you  say  you  did,  he 
never  knew  it?" 

"No."  A  curious  expression  came  over  Person's 
face  and  crumpled  it  into  another  sort  of  document. 
It  bespoke  remembrance  of  the  uphill  paths  he  had 


222  VANISHING  POINTS 

travelled  to  his  gilded  cell.  "Tileston  never  knew 
anything  about  the  matter.  We  had  a  kind  of  an 
unpleasantness  at  that  time.  He  got  hold  of  some 
things  he  didn't — understand."  Janie,  with  a  light 
vault  into  the  saddle  of  intuition,  thought  he  had  been 
about  to  say,  "  stand  for",  and  on  that  hint  coursed 
along  after  him.  "In  regard  to  the  business,  that  is. 
He  meant  to  leave  me.  We  talked  that  out  a  day  or 
two  before  he  died." 

"What  made  you  let  the  other  matter  rest?  Wasn't 
it  of  a  sort  to  be  settled  on  the  dot?  You  couldn't  have 
meant  to  leave  it  that  way,  at  loose  ends.  The  avenue 
was  voted  on  in  less  than  a  month." 

Person's  mouth  worked  a  little.  "I  did  mean  to 
clinch  it,"  he  said.  "  I  put  it  off." 

Instantly  Janie  felt  she  was  running  back  over  the 
difficult  path,  her  mind  with  his,  and  she  thought  she 
saw  exactly  how  it  had  been.  Person  was  younger 
then,  less  toughened  to  the  world's  assaults,  and  momen- 
tarily he  had  found  himself  unable  to  stand  before  the 
temperamental  onslaught  of  Tileston's  scorn.  Marshall 
too,  had  his  conclusions. 

"He  would  have  repudiated  it? "  he  put  in  irresistibly. 

Person  did  riot  seem  to  hear. 

"I'd  only  to  tell  him  and  the  transfer  would  have 
been  made,"  he  averred.  "Tileston  was  an  honest 
man."  And  then,  with  no  implication  of  the  sequence, 
"He  was  no  sort  of  a  clerk  for  me.  I  shouldn't  have 
taken  him  in  the  first  place — but  we  were  boys  to- 
gether." 

"Then,  when  he  died,  the  property  stood  in  his 
name.  You  got  left,  so  to  speak." 


THE  LANTERN  223 

"It  stood  in  his  name,"  said  Porson,  briefly. 

"Mr.  Porson,"  said  Marshall,  "I  wish  you'd  let  me 
use  this  as  an  interview.  It's  magnificent  copy." 

"No,"  said  Porson,  immovably,  "I  don't  want  you 
to  use  it  and  I  don't  want  you  to  speak  of  the  land. 
Tileston  left  a  widow  and  a  crippled  daughter.  That 
property  appreciated." 

"I  should  say  it  did!" 

"They're  living  on  it  to-day.  If  they  knew  how  it 
come — well,  I  don't  feel  sure  what  they'd  do  about  it. 
I  rather  guess  it  wouldn't  be  safe." 

"What  makes  you  think  so?" 

"You  see  the  widow  come  to  me  after  Tileston's 
death.  She  was  a  kind  of  a  high-spirited  woman. 
Interested  in  charities.  Wanted  to  reform  the  city 
government.  Nice  pleasant  woman,  too.  Well, 
somebody 'd  got  hold  of  her  and  told  her  Tileston  was, 
smart  as  a  trap  to  fall  in  with  the  city  government  and 
pick  up  that  land  before  the  deal  went  through,  and  she 
come  to  me  with  tears  in  her  eyes.  Said  her  husband 
couldn't  do  a  thing  like  that.  If  he  could,  she'd  throw 
the  money  into  the  sea.  Said  she  only  hoped  the  firm 
had  been  doing  it  through  him.  Ready  to  sign  it  over 
to  us.  Seemed  as  if  she  couldn't  do  it  soon  enough." 

' '  What  did  you  say? ' '  Marshall  asked  it  breathlessly. 

The  ghost  of  a  relaxation  that  might  have  served 
Porson  for  a  smile,  was  wrinkling  his  lean  face. 

"I  told  her  Tileston  would  have  cut  off  his  right  hand 
before  he'd  have  dickered  with  the  city  government." 

"Did  that  convince  her?" 

"Oh,  yes.  She  never  liked  me  very  well.  Said  she 
could  trust  me  to  tell  her  the  worst,  because  if  there  was 


224  VANISHING  POINTS 

a  chance  of  the  property's  comin'  to  the  firm  she  knew 
I'd  be  eager  and  ready.  Oh,  no!  She  never  liked  me." 

"  And  you  think  if  she  knew  now 

"I've  watched  that  woman  a  good  many  years. 
She  ain't  the  kind  of  a  woman  you  care  so  very  much 
about — "  he  made  that  slight  motion  of  his  toward  the 
darkness  where  Janie  sat,  and  she  at  least  knew,  with 
a  cognizance  purely  feminine,  that  he  was  remembering 
her  as  something  to  be  valued —  "but  you'd  know  she'd 
shell  out  in  a  second  if  she  thought  the  money  didn't 
come  the  straight  road." 

"  You  think  she'd  do  it  now?" 

"I  know  she  would." 

"  And  she  and  the  crippled  daughter " 

" They'd  go  to  the  wall." 

The  two  men  sat  for  a  minute  or  two  in  silence, 
Person  not  even  beating  his  impatient  fingers  upon  the 
table.  Janie,  hearing  her  own  hurried  heart,  hardly 
dared  watch  them  now.  When  her  husband  spoke, 
hot  tears  came  into  her  eyes.  The  tone  was  the  one  of 
infinite  softness  he  was  accustomed  to  use  for  her  only. 

"Now,  you  see  I've  mentioned  the  deal  already. 
I  can't  take  that  back.  I've  got  to  speak  of  it  again. 
How  would  it  do  if  I  should  refer  to  it  as  one  of  those 
curious  strokes  of  chance  by  which  an  honest  man, 
not  especially  fitted  for  business,  should  have  picked 
up  some  land  nobody  wanted — picked  it  up  at  the 
crucial  moment  just  as  the  tide  turned  its  way?" 

"That's  it,"  said  Person,  with  an  evident  relief. 
"But  this — "  he  pointed  to  the  proof  which  he  evidently 
regarded  with  the  deference  of  unaccustomed  eyes, 
"this  is  printed." 


THE  LANTERN  225 

"It  hasn't  gone  into  the  magazine.  I  can  arrange 
that.  I  can  elaborate  the  stock  transaction  toward 
the  close  and  cut  this  for  space." 

Porson  picked  up  the  proof  and  began  reading  the 
concluding  paragraphs.  Janie  slipped  out  into  the 
kitchen  and  Marshall  heard  water  running  through  the 
filter.  He  watched  Porson  now  with  a  softened,  even 
an  eager,  curiosity.  What  would  it  mean  to  the  man 
to  read  the  record  of  this  other  transaction,  perhaps 
the  most  disgraceful,  and  yet  legally  the  safest  of  his 
whole  career.  Porson  laid  the  paper  down,  a  veiled  yet 
retrospective  look  upon  his  face. 

"Have  I—"  Marshall  hesitated—  "Mr.  Porson,  do 
you  challenge  that?" 

But  Porson,  taking  his  hat  to  go,  looked  merely 
inscrutable. 

"  I  see  you've  put  it  in  71,"  he  answered. 

"Yes,  April,  71.    I  believe  that's  the  right  date." 

Janie  was  flying  in  to  them  with  a  tray,  two  glasses 
and  a  pitcher.  Her  eyes  held  points  of  light.  She 
flushed  all  over  her  face,  as  if  at  some  extraordinary 
event. 

"I  made  you  some  lemonade,  Mr.  Porson,"  she  said. 
"Won't  you  try  it,  please?" 

The  request  was  even  urgent,  as  if  Porson  could  do 
her  the  most  distinct  favor.  He  accepted  a  glass 
gravely,  and  drank  without  pause.  Marshall,  tasting, 
stopped  and  threw  Janie  a  whimsical,  terrified  look, 
because  she  had  left  out  the  ice.  Then  he  remembered 
that  a  part  of  their  personal  data  was  to  the  effect 
that  Porson's  elected  beverage  was  unchilled  lemon- 


226  VANISHING  POINTS 

ade,  and  smiled  over  the  drink  at  Janie,  who  had 
scored. 

Person  set  down  his  glass. 

"I'll  bid  you  good  evening,"  he  said.  He  was  going 
out,  veiled  again  in  his  poor  inscrutability.  But  Janie 
dashed  at  him,  in  a  warm  impulsive  hurry. 

"Good-by,  Mr.  Porson,"  she  said.  "Won't  you 
shake  hands?" 

He  looked  briefly  surprised;  the  gnarled  old  hand 
enveloped  hers,  and  again  he  said  good-night.  They 
heard  the  shambling,  undignified  tread  lessening  down 
the  stairs.  Then  they  looked  at  each  other.  There 
were  tears  in  Janie's  eyes,  and  Marshall  frankly  swore. 

"He's  made  it  over,"  she  said,  tumultuously,  "the 
world  I  saw  to-night.  It  was  dark  with  evil,  and  Per- 
son's hung  a  light  in  it." 

Marshall  was  looking  toward  the  door,  closed  upon 
the  meagre  figure.  His  hand  lay  upon  the  proofs  where 
he  had  put  all  that  his  clever  mind  had  been  able  to 
gather  concerning  another  man. 

"So  that,"  he  said,  in  a  curious  tone,  "is  Porson. 
That's  the  man  himself." 


THE  PRIVATE  SOLDIER 

ONSLOW  PERRY  sat  in  the  dusty,  booklined 
office  of  the  Flywheel  Publishing  Company, 
his  hand  half-con cealingly,  half-protectingly 
on  a  letter  he  had  just  finished,  and  looked  across  the 
table  at  the  soft-coal  fire  burning  in  the  rusted  grate. 
The  Flywheel  had  selected  an  old  house,  falling  into 
decay,  in  a  quarter  of  the  town  forsaken  by  the  sort 
of  residents  that  had  built  it  up  grandly  more  than  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  The  mantels  were  so 
good,  both  sponsors  of  the  Flywheel  said  gravely  when 
they  were  chaffed  about  gravitating  to  the  slums. 
So  they  put  the  house  into  fitting  repair,  and  ceased 
to  take  any  after-notice  of  it  so  far  as  dust  and  cobwebs 
went;  they  affected  the  attitude  of  leaving  it  to  itself, 
to  grow  ancient  again.  There  Dickerman,  the  editor 
and  publisher,  and  Perry,  his  subordinate,  received 
manuscript  and  made  up  the  magazine.  They  had 
swallowed  the  house  whole,  it  was  said,  for  they  also 
lived  there  and  skirmished  about,  from  inconsiderable 
eating-houses  on  their  lean  days  to  gilded  cafe's  when 
their  pockets  ran  over. 

It  was  matter  for  amazement  in  a  time  when  new 
magazines  spring  up  and  flourish  briefly,  that  the 
Flywheel  in  particular  should  have  sold;  but  even  at 
first  it  did,  and  the  wise  declared  they  knew  the  reason. 
Dickerman  was  buying  the  most  expensive  and  splendid 

227 


228  VANISHING  POINTS 

contributors  with  his  father's  money,  though  he  had  the 
whim  of  making  them  publish  anonymously.  Dicker- 
man  himself,  known  in  college  as  Crazy  Ike,  Dotty  Dick, 
and  half  a  dozen  titles  to  the  same  shading  and  effect 
could  scarcely  contain  himself  when  the  circulation  ran 
unhaltingly  up.  It  was,  he  felt,  a  personal  tribute.  He 
had  planned  the  whole  thing,  and  it  was  true  that 
he  had  put  his  father's  money  into  it,  after  coaxings 
colored  by  sanguine  prophecies  absurdly  contrasted 
with  his  resultant  surprise  at  their  fulfillment.  But 
there,  at  a  good  figure,  the  circulation  hung.  It  could  not 
be  whipped  or  spurred,  nor  did  it  drop  very  startlingly 
below  that  first  buoyant  figure. 

Dickerman  was  a  favorite  among  his  mates,  and  he 
had  an  enormous  acquaintance.  Perry,  too,  owned  a 
vogue  of  another  sort.  Men  who  were  not  of  their 
own  kind,  brokers,  grave  professional  workers,  or 
gamblers  on  the  scent  of  money,  having  met  the  two 
at  clubs  and  laughed  at  their  stories,  their  wild  play 
of  imagination,  and  antiphonal  abuse  of  each  other, 
cherished  a  lively  curiosity  to  see  what  they  would  say 
when  they  really  had  a  medium  like  the  Flywheel.  The 
two  men  together  were  possessed  of  a  trick  of  augment- 
ing each  other,  to  the  general  mirth;  and  the  absent, 
who  happened  not  to  be  creditors,  always  thought  of 
them  to  the  accompaniment  of  a  smile. 

Perry,  who  sat  at  the  table,  arms  relaxed  and  face 
wistfully  puckered,  hardly  looked  like  a  ministrant  to 
gayety.  He  was  sinewy,  and  light  of  hair  and  eyes, 
six  feet  tall,  with  good  broad  shoulders  and  a  swing  and 
dash  that  made  the  ladies  look  at  him  demurely.  His 
thick  hair  tumbled  over  his  forehead  in  a  blowzy  way, 


THE  PRIVATE  SOLDIER  229 

because  he  rumpled  it  when  the  world  went  ill.  To 
the  casual  eye,  he  was  a  handsome,  virile  animal,  with 
no  lines  permanent  enough  as  yet  to  tell  careless  tales. 
The  time  would  come  when,  unless  he  hardened  his 
face  by  the  repeated  hammer-strokes  that  mould  and 
change,  some  one  would  see  a  blenching  of  the  eye, 
when  his  more  decided  intimates  called  upon  him  to  do 
or  leave  undone, — a  sensitive  quiver  of  the  mouth. 

The  door  from  the  inner  office  opened,  and  Dicker- 
man  came  in.  He  was  shortlegged,  and  cushiony  in  the 
shoulders,  absurdly  fat,  with  round  eyes  staring  behind 
large  horn-bowed  spectacles.  His  hair  stood  straight 
up  from  his  forehead  in  bristles  aggressively  cultivated. 
The  frown  also  was  a  part  of  his  equipment,  lest  the 
world  should  misprize  him  for  the  plumpness  thrust 
upon  hmi.  He  threw  a  manuscript  on  the  table. 

"  Read  that, "  said  he. 

"When  I  have  time,"  Perry  answered,  as  if  he  did 
not  propose  to  use  the  time  he  had,  at  call. 

"You've  got  time  now.  It's  only  four  thousand 
words.  Want  to  talk  to  you  about  it." 

Perry  only  leaned  back  in  his  chair,  and  gazed 
thoughtfully  at  Dickerman,  who,  knowing  this  mood  in 
him,  affected  not  to  recognize  it,  and  sought  about 
among  the  effects  on  the  table,  whistling  cheerily.  But 
he  was  of  the  nature  that,  having  something  to  say, 
cannot  defer  it. 

"I'm  going  to  just  electrify  you,  Perry,"  he  burst 
forth.  "They 're  on  to  us." 

"Who  are?" 

"Everybody.  They  will  be  by  day  after  to-morrow. 
I  met  Hunkins  on  the  ferry,  and  he  couldn't  contain 


230  VANISHING  POINTS 

himself.  Said  he'd  discovered  how  we  made  the  Fly- 
wheel so  distinctive.  Said  he  found  five  or  six  old  num- 
bers on  the  hotel  table  where  he'd  been  to  interview  the 
mill-hands.  Said  he  read  'em  consecutively.  Said  he 
guessed  the  whole  thing." 

Perry  was  looking  at  him  with  a  gravity  that  seemed 
to  indicate  an  issue  very  bad  indeed. 

"What  did  you  say?"  he  inquired. 

"Asked  him  what  he  meant." 

"Well?" 

"Said  he  wouldn't  tell.  We  could  buy  the  Wednes- 
day's Trumpet  and  find  out." 

"He  has  a  weekly  column." 

"Yes.  And  when  he'd  said  that,  he  just  couldn't 
hold  in,  and  came  back  and  sputtered  and  laughed 
the  way  he  does,  and  said  he  was  going  to  write  the 
history  of  the  magazine  and  name  it  the  Echo.  Then 
he  called  me  a  clever  fellow." 

"What  did  you  call  him?" 

"An  ass.    Because  that  was  the  answer  to  it." 

"Well,"  said  Perry.  He  took  up  a  pencil  and  began 
drawing  whorls  and  circles  with  a  clever  hand.  He  had 
a  certain  facility  in  everything.  At  one  time,  when 
he  was  an  intimate  of  an  artistic  set  in  college,  there  had 
been  an  impression  that  he  was  going  to  work  miracles 
as  a  draughtsman  of  some  sort. 

Dickie  began  to  grin.  He  had  a  wide  mouth  and 
beautiful  teeth. 

"I  almost  told  him  how  I  did  it,"  he  said,  with  a 
chuckling  appreciation  of  his  own  folly. 

"Told  him  how  you  invented  the  Flywheel?" 

"Yes.     It  tickled  me  so  I  thought  I'd  have  to." 


THE  PRIVATE  SOLDIER  231 

"Fool,"  said  Perry,  indulgently. 

"I  saw  myself  lying  there — I  was  in  bed,  you  know — 
and  thinking  how  it's  only  discovery  that  counts. 
After  anybody's  found  a  new  way  of  doing  something 
or  other,  there'll  be  plenty  of  fellows  that  can  do  the 
trick  as  well  as  he  can,  or  better.  But  he  caught  it 
while  it  was  rushing  by,  and  labeled  it,  and  it  stands  in 
the  museum  in  his  name." 

"Yes,  I  know  all  that.  You  said  that  when  you 
came  to  rope  me  in.  You  reeled  it  off,  and  I  knew  it  was 
a  monologue  you'd  got  up  for  the  boys;  and  then  you 
sprung  it  on  me  that  you  were  going  to  start  a  mag- 
azine." 

"With  anonymous  contributions." 

"Which  I  was  to  write." 

"Because  you  could  write  'em.  If  I  could  have  done 
it,  do  you  s'pose  I'd  have  summoned  anybody  else  from 
the  vasty  deep?  " 

"Never  mind  whether  you  would  or  wouldn't. 
Anyhow,  I've  done  it.  I've  ground  you  out  an  imita- 
tion of  Kipling  and  an  imitation  of  Shaw,  and  all  the 
whole  blooming  push,  and  when  you've  given  'em  a 
good  plausible  title  and  put  'em  in  without  a  name, 
blessed  if  the  wise  can  tell  whether  it  isn't  Kipling  and 
Shaw." 

"No,  they  can't.  But  here's  that  prattler's  article 
coming  out,  and  it  gives  the  whole  thing  away.  I  do 
hate  an  incontinent  blabber.  If  a  fellow's  got  something 
to  say,  why  can't  he  keep  his  mouth  shut?  " 

That  sounded  to  them  both  like  the  verbal  tricks 
they  used  to  delight  the  groundlings,  and  it  made  them 
melancholy.  Perry  often  declared  that  nothing  so 


232  VANISHING  POINTS 

blighted  them  as  the  particular  character  of  each  other's 
babble. 

"It  might  boom  the  Flywheel"  he  said,  after  a 
time. 

"Why,  it's  putting  a  knife  into  it!  Poor  little  Fly- 
wheel. Poor  'itty  sing." 

"You  can't  tell.  When  it  comes  to  advertising, 
attack's  as  good  as  reinforcement.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  you  really  never  can  tell." 

Dickerman  stretched  out  his  short  legs  and  regarded 
them  with  disfavor.  After  a  period  of  incubation,  he 
glanced  up  brightly. 

"You  know  my  system,"  he  said. 

Perry  spoke  brutally,  out  of  the  affectionate  derision 
that  counts  itself  exempt  from  casuistry.  ' '  You  haven't 
any  system  except  the  one  you're  riddling  with  high- 
balls and  cigarettes." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  saying  I've  got  no  system? 
I  live  by  the  inner  light." 

"Inner  grandmother!" 

"No,  inner  light.  I'm  a  very  intuitive  person.  I 
take  up  the  morning  paper.  I  turn  to  the  market. 
If  my  inner  light  sends  a  long  shaft  of  radiance,  'mystic, 
wonderful',  to  any  particular  name,  I  buy  that  stock." 

"You  never  made  enough  in  stocks  in  the  whole 
course  of  your  life  to  buy  your  shoe-strings  with,  and 
have  'em  charged." 

"What's  that  got  to  do  with  it?  The  inner  light  goes 
on  shining  just  the  same.  It's  like  the  death  of  Paul 
Dombey.  'The  light  is  shining  on  me  as  I  go.'  Well, 
it's  shining  on  me  now." 

"Oh,    you    'go'    fast   enough,"    commented  Perry, 


THE  PRIVATE  SOLDIER  233 

gloomily.  "The  bait  isn't  dug  that  you  wouldn't 
nibble  at." 

"Now  here  we  come  to  the  Flywheel.  When  Hunkins 
told  me  he  proposed  showing  up  our  methods,  the  inner 
light  just  coruscated,  and  I  saw  with  my  subconscious 
vision, ' Change  your  methods.'  That's  what  we're  going 
to  do,  my  boy.  We're  going  to  change  our  methods." 

"Then  it  happens  at  the  right  time,"  said  Perry 
quickly,  as  if  he  found  himself  lacking  in  impetus  to 
speak  at  all. 

" 'Psychological  moment!'  Have  we  got  that  on  the 
Flywheel's  taboo  list?  I  must  put  down  'anent'  and 
'Frankenstein'.  I  thought  of  them  this  morning." 

"It  happens  just  right  for  me,"  Perry  continued, 
"because  you  won't  need  me." 

"Need  you!  Great  Caesar!  you're  the  jelly  in  the 
tart.  You're^/" 

Perry  played  with  his  pencil,  using  it,  by  adroit 
touches,  to  thrust  the  stamped  letter  before  him  into  a 
series  of  quick  changes  of  place,  as  if  it  were  a  game. 
He  glanced  up  from  moment  to  moment,  in  a  desultory 
way,  to  watch  his  friend. 

"I've  had  an  offer,  Dickie,"  he  said,  "to  go  on  the 
Civilian  at  fifteen  per." 

"Shameful!  you  sha'n't!" 

Perry  did  not  fight  out  that  purely  financial  issue. 

"I've  written  them  I'd  go,"  he  said.  "The  letter's 
here." 

Dickie  made  a  dive  for  it,  but  Perry,  by  a  ready 
counter-movement,  as  if  this  also  were  the  game,  caught 
it  up  and  dropped  it  into  a  drawer. 

"Don't  you  mail  that  letter,"  Dickie  blustered. 


234  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Maybe  I  shan't.  Honest,  I  don't  know  whether 
I  shall  or  not.  But  it's  written.  I  thought  I'd  like  to 
see  how  it  would  sound." 

Dickerman  was  staring  at  him  with  eyes  ridiculously 
distended.  He  was  white  with  surprised  apprehension, 
white  in  patches  that,  beside  the  adjacent  pink  of 
his  skin,  had  a  droll  distinctness. 

"I  never  heard  of  such  a  thing,"  he  declared.  " Never! 
You  know  you  can  do  what  no  other  fellow  can,  and 
you  propose  to  lock  up  your  capital,  refuse  to  let  it 
earn  anything  for  you,  and  go  out  hod-carrying  for  so 
much  a  day." 

Perry  was  returning  his  gaze  with  the  rather  appeal- 
ing smile  that  made  him  younger  than  his  years,  the 
air  of  the  boy  that  asks  sweetly,  unassumingly,  foi 
something  he  might  easily  be  denied. 

"The  fact  is,  Dick,  it's  awfully  bad  for  me  to  do  your 
kind  of  thing.  You  see,  it's  a  sort  of  high-class  forgery." 

"Bad  for  you?  What  do  you  mean?  Bad  for  your 
brains,  or  your  pocket,  or  what?  " 

Now  Perry  looked  absurdly  conscious.  His  shame- 
faced mien  said  that  he  might  be  about  to  say  something 
which  could  be  used  as  a  perennial  text  for  jeering. 

"It  resolves  itself,"  he  deprecated,  "into  that  ques- 
tion of  the  inner  light." 

But  although  Dickerman  had  himself  introduced 
the  inner  light  as  a  factor  of  illumination,  somehow  it 
became  immediately  different  when  Perry  turned  it 
on.  It  had  ceased  to  disclose  the  merely  humorous. 
It  laid  bare,  with  a  most  embarrassing  distinctness, 
that  earnest  which  is  likely  to  be  comedy's  next  neigh- 
bor. He  shook  his  head. 


THE  PRIVATE  SOLDIER  235 

"I  haven't  the  least  idea  what  you're  driving  at," 
he  averred. 

"No,"  said  Perry.  "I  know  you  haven't.  Did 
it  ever  occur  to  you  that  I'm  a  queer  sort  of  chap?" 

"  You're  as  clever  as  they  make  'em,"  Dickie  flashed 
back,  as  if  he  were  bidding  for  him. 

"That's  it.  But  it  isn't  my  cleverness.  It's  the 
cleverness  of  the  other  man,  the  one  that  makes  me 
talk,  or  write, — the  author  of  the  book  I  imitate.  I'm 
a  kind  of  a  mirror.  You  hold  up  things  to  me  and  I 
reflect  'em."  His  face  betrayed  a  keen  mortification, 
the  flush  and  quiver  that  might  have  sprung  from  some 
definite  slight  or  indignity  of  the  moment. 

Dickie  saw  no  way  of  following  him,  and  frankly 
abjured  the  trouble  of  attempting  it. 

"Oh,  pshaw!"  said  he.  "You're  dotty.  Come  back! 
The  Flywheel 's  got  to  be  adjusted.  I  told  you  I  meant 
to  change  the  system.  I'm  going  to  have  some  clever 
original  work.  What  we  want  is  to  discover  somebody. ' ' 

"Count  me  out.    You  can't  discover  me." 

Dickie  pointed  dramatically  at  the  manuscript  he 
had  brought  in  with  him. 

"He's  discovered,"  he  remarked,  with  oracular 
certainty.  "Behold!" 

Perry  stretched  out  his  hand. 

* '  Give  it  here, ' '  he  bade  him.    "  Let  me  see." 

He  took  the  paper  and  read  it  fast,  frowning  over  it, 
and  once  he  broke  out: 

"Good!  oh,  good!" 

Dickie,  nodding  from  time  to  tune  as  he  saw  recogni- 
tion of  this  or  that  distinction  he  remembered,  smiled 
triumphantly.  Perry  turned  back  to  the  beginning 


236  VANISHING  POINTS 

and  ran  swiftly  over  it  again.  Then  he  slapped  it 
down  on  the  table  and  left  it  there,  regarding  it  with  a 
mixture  of  affection  and  abusive  rallying,  as  one  might 
a  newly  discovered  and  most  bewildering  person  who 
is  really  so  consummate  that  the  finder  shrinks  from 
disclosing  the  full  measure  of  his  own  extravagant 
approval. 

"And  the  whole  thing  has  been  waiting  round  the 
corner  ever  since  New  York  has  had  a  foreign  popula- 
tion," he  said,  in  wonder.  "One  man  does  the  Ghetto 
and  another  Little  Italy,  and  just  these  people  in  here 
have  been  toting  their  bundles  and  marrying  and 
burying,  and  nobody 's  photographed  them.  We're 
as  dense  as  our  cloud-capp'd  granite  hills." 

"Well,  we  needn't  be  dense  any  longer,"  said  Dickie. 
His  eyes  had  that  peculiar  gleam  that  gathered  when 
he  came  in  after  a  particularly  good  night's  sleep  and 
declared  the  world  looked  so  bright  to  him,  and  he 
found  morning  was  so  exactly  at  seven,  that  he'd 
bought  five  hundred  shares  of  some  stock  with  a  pic- 
turesque name,  because  the  sound  of  it  invited  him. 
"I  want  a  series — six  stories  like  that." 

"Well,  you've  got  the  first.  Going  to  order  five 
others?" 

"I'm  going  to  order  six  others — of  you." 

"Me?   What  have  I  got  to  do  with  it? " 

"My  boy,  you're  the  great  and  only  imitator.  You've 
read  one  story  and  you've  seen  how  the  trick  was  done. 
I'll  bet  a  shoe-button  you  could  tell  me  on  the  dot  the 
names  of  the  others  that  jumped  into  your  brain  since 
you  read  this." 

Perry  stirred  uncomfortably  in  his  chair. 


THE  PRIVATE  SOLDIER  237 

"What's  the  use  of  talking  like  that?"  he  inquired, 
testily.  "You  don't  know  what's  in  my  brain,  nor 
whether  I've  got  a  brain  at  all." 

"Three  thousand  for  six,"  Dickie  was  bidding.  The 
color,  a  girlish  rose  flush,  had  overspread  his  cheeks. 
His  eyes  gained  in  light  until  they  glittered  with  the 
gambling  zest.  "Daddy '11  stand  for  it.  He  made 
golcondas  in  sugar  last  week.  Three  thousand!  You 
can  go  abroad  and  tell  Chesterton  he's  a  paradox. 
You  can  go  to  China  and  drop  a  tear  on  the  grave  of 
Tsi-hsi.  What  do  you  say?  " 

The  enemy  within  was  beguiling  Perry  more  in- 
sidiously than  the  persuader  without.  The  six  stories 
with  the  same  complexion,  every  intimate  touch  to  the 
life  like  this,  were  lined  up  beckoning  to  him.  He  put 
out  his  hand  rather  uncertainly  toward  the  manuscript. 
He  hated  to  dismiss  them  into  oblivion,  pretty,  in- 
genuous, unborn  children.  His  vague  seeking  for  con- 
trol and  guidance  was  only  stronger  than  his  lack  of 
personal  initiative.  Give  him  the  right  sort  of  captain, 
he  had  always  known,  and  he  could  have  made  a 
faithful  soldier. 

"How  about  this  girl?"  he  asked. 

"Girl?  That  isn't  a  girl.  It's  a  middle-aged  man, 
knocked  into  shape  by  all  the  devilish  things  we  know — 
competition  and  work  and  worry.  Don't  you  see  how 
middle-aged  it  is?" 

"Don't  you  see  how  ideal  it  is?"  Perry  did  lay  his 
hand  on  the  paper  now,  almost  caressingly. 

"I  rather  guess  you  can  recall  your  ideals  when  you're 
middle-aged.  They  loom,  too,  you're  so  far  in  the 
ditch  below  them.  Oh,  no,  Perry,  no!  This  is  mellow. 


238  VANISHING  POINTS 

There's  practice  in  it,  disappointment.  Nobody  under 
thirty  ever  said  a  thing  like  that."  He  drew  the  man- 
uscript from  Perry's  unwilling  fingers  and  whirled 
the  pages  to  a  halt.  " Read  that." 

Perry  evidently  did  not  propose  recurring  to  it.  The 
impression  made  on  him  at  the  start  needed  no  aug- 
menting. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  with  it?"  he  asked. 

"Return  it,"  Dickie  responded,  in  a  tone  as  conclu- 
sive as  the  words. 

"Pick  her  brains  of  their  secret  and  then  chuck  the 
shell  of  it  back  to  her?  Talk  about  the  inner  light! 
Dick,  you're  defeated.  You're  killed,  but  you  don't 
know  it." 

"Fiddlededum!"  said  Dickerman,  looking  at  his 
watch.  "I've  got  to  be  up  town  in  less  time  than  I  can 
get  there.  You  must  see  the  author.  He's  coming  in 
this  morning  for  his  manuscript." 

"This  author?    This  manuscript? " 

"Yes,  he  wrote  he'd  call.  I  fancied  he  had  to  con- 
sider the  difference  between  one  stamp  or  two,  poor 
beggar!  I  depute  to  you  the  task  of  telling  him  we 
don't  want  the  manuscript,  and  offering  him  a  cigar. 
You'll  see  for  yourself  he's  a  man  of  forty." 

Dickie  was  out  of  his  chair,  giving  a  characteristic 
hunch  to  his  clothes,  to  adapt  them  the  more  graciously 
to  his  hateful  chubbiness.  Perry  looked  his  helpless 
discomfort  over  the  job  thrust  upon  him,  and  asked 
rather  bitterly, — 

"Shall  I  tell  her  you  are  returning  the  manuscript 
because  I  can  write  you  six  of  the  same  pattern,  now 
I've  learned  the  way?" 


THE  PRIVATE  SOLDIER  239 

"Tell  him  I  refuse  it,  that's  all.  I  do,  lock,  stock,  and 
barrel,  prologue  and  epilogue.  I  don't  want  it.  No 
printee.  Finis." 

"Why  not  ask  her  to  write  you  five  more  like  it?" 

"Because  I  don't  want  her  to.  Because" — he  halted 
at  the  door  and  diffused  the  sunniest  smile — "because 
you'll  do  the  same  thing  better.  You  always  improve 
on  your  pattern.  That's  why  you're  the  man  to  do  it. 
*  We  needs  must  love  the  highest,'  mustn't  we?  I  rather 
guess  we  must.  If  you  can  do  a  better  job  than  this 
codger  that's  happened  to  stumble  on  a  gold  mine, 
aren't  you  the  chap  to  do  it?  Bet  you'll  have  three  of 
'em  written  before  to-morrow  morning.  And — don't 
you  mail  that  letter." 

He  whistled  cheerily  down  the  stairs,  and  Perry 
condemned  him  picturesquely.  He  pounced  on  a  big 
envelope,  as  if  it  could  help  him,  and  dipped  his  pen. 
The  story  should  be  mailed  to  the  author  whose  literary 
domain  was  threatened  with  invasion.  It  should  be  out 
of  the  office  on  the  instant,  so  that  it  could  tempt 
him  no  more  with  its  beguiling  limpidity,  its  human 
warmth,  the  perfection  of  form  that  might  well  be  the 
despair  of  even  a  master  imitator. 

But  when  he  returned  to  the  manuscript  for  the 
address,  he  had  the  setback  of  finding  none.  Then  he 
pushed  it  away  from  him,  and,  because  his  angry  im- 
pulse had  spent  itself  and  he  lacked  even  the  spirit  to 
go  into  the  inner  room  to  find  a  record  of  the  story,  he 
lay  back  in  his  chair  with  one  idle  hand  hanging  over 
the  arm,  and  tried  to  fight  down  the  certainty  that  this 
was  destiny  and  that  he  was  about  to  do  the  job  of  his 
nefarious  imitating.  Pen  and  ink  seemed  calling  him 


240  VANISHING  POINTS 

with  the  force  of  a  spell.  Arguments  began  to  chase 
through  his  mind,  not  for  earning  the  money,  but  for 
proving  to  himself  that  he  could  do  work  as  good  as 
this,  and  better.  He  went  back  over  the  genesis  of 
literature  and  reminded  himself  that  one  man  could 
hardly  do  whatever  he  did  save  in  the  light  cast  over 
his  shoulder  by  the  other  man  who  had  gone  before. 
Who  except  the  scholar,  reading  certain  verse,  remem- 
bered who  first  made  that  metre  his  own  and  sealed 
it,  as  he  had  thought,  with  a  golden  seal  of  his  recog- 
nized distinction?  One  man  had  opened  the  orient  to 
western  eyes  by  the  talisman  of  his  quick  sight  and 
hurrying  pen,  and  the  west  had  rushed  into  what  had 
looked  at  first  like  preempted  ground,  and  staked  out 
splendid  claims. 

First,  there  is  the  discoverer.  Then,  when  the  trees 
are  blazed  by  the  pioneer  axe,  paths  have  to  be  made  to 
river  and  spring.  He  remembered  a  poem  that  told, 
with  a  dignified  but  hurt  emphasis,  this  same  tale  of  the 
pioneer's  sharing  his  discovery  with  after-invaders 
deputed,  by  the  unvarying  law  of  leveling,  to  develop 
the  land.  Once,  in  the  midst  of  this  inner  colloquy,  he 
paused,  with  a  whimsical  flirt  of  the  mind,  to  wonder 
whether  Dickerman,  on  his  way  up  town,  was  sending 
these  arguments  back  to  him  by  wireless;  it  was  a  part 
of  his  morbid  self -consciousness,  at  this  time,  to  regard 
Dickie,  when  he  was  not  in  the  room  offering  his  pink- 
iness  and  gayety  for  testimony  to  the  wholesomeness 
of  things,  as  mysteriously  equipped  with  necromantic 
powers. 

Now,  he  felt,  his  mind  was  almost  reconciled  to  the 
feat  of  leaping  into  the  field  and  sowing  magic  seed  of 


THE  PRIVATE  SOLDIER  241 

the  plant  that  comes  up  in  an  hour,  where  the  other 
mind  had  ploughed  and  furrowed  and  raised  the  stock 
that  bore  the  bright  new  bloom :  almost  reconciled,  but 
not  quite.  There  was  something  within  him,  an  un- 
named personality,  something  more  august  than  any 
mind,  and  either  royal  or  timid,  because  it  walked  al- 
ways veiled.  On  this  inner  person  he  was  now  laying 
a  mandatory  and  beseeching  finger,  bidding  it  come  out 
into  the  daylight  and  tell  what  it  really  had  to  say, 
when  the  door  opened  and  the  girl  stepped  in.  That 
was  what  he  called  her  at  once,  because  he  had  proph- 
esied her  in  relation  to  the  story — the  girl.  She  was 
dark  and  slender,  very  neat  and  yet  not  at  first  sight 
significant,  because  she  looked  like  many  other  women 
dressed  trigly  for  their  work.  But  Perry,  as  he  got  out 
of  his  chair,  noted  distinctive  things  about  her:  a  pallor 
that  was  yet  wholesome,  dark  shining  hair,  and  sincere 
gray  eyes  under  a  lovely  line  of  brow.  She  was  not 
timid,  he  saw,  for  she  advanced  to  his  table  at  once, 
and  said, — 

"My  name  is  Hartwell.  I  came  to  ask  about  a 
manuscript  I  sent  in." 

"G.  Hartwell?"  he  inquired.  He  went  round  the 
table,  and  pulled  out  Dickie's  chair.  "  Won't  you  sit 
down,  Miss  Hartwell?  I  have  the  manuscript  here." 

She  took  the  chair  with  a  quiet  acceptance  of  its 
being  the  thing  to  do;  but  her  eye  did  light  when  it 
followed  his  to  the  little  pile  of  paper  there  on  the  table. 

"I  hope,"  she  began,  and  then  dropped  into  a  form 
of  speech  that  should  make  it  easier  for  him:  "I'm 
afraid  you're  not  going  to  take  it." 

"Have  you  been  writing  long?" 


242  VANISHING  POINTS 

He  had  gone  back  to  his  seat,  and  now  reproved 
himself  for  the  futility  of  his  beginning  when  it  was  so 
evident  that  she  was  too  young  to  have  been  doing 
anything  long. 

"I  don't  write.  I  teach  school.  But  I  want  to  leave 
it,  and  do  writing  altogether." 

" Journalism,  or — this?"  He  touched  the  manu- 
script again  with  a  kind  of  approving  intimacy. 

"I've  already  done  some  journalism,  book-notices 
and  reading  manuscript.  But  this,"  her  eyes,  too, 
sought  the  story,  "this  is  what  I  really  want  to  do." 

At  once  he  saw  that  it  stood  for  exactly  what  it  did 
in  his  own  longings, — one  of  the  free,  splendid  mas- 
teries, a  craft  to  be  studied  with  devotion  for  a  lifetime 
perhaps,  if  only  one  could  say  at  the  close,  "I  have 
served  one  thing  well."  He  wanted  to  have  his  brutal 
task  over  as  soon  as  possible. 

"He's  not  going  to  take  it,"  he  threw  at  her. 

A  look  of  almost  terrified  surprise  shot  into  her  face, 
to  be  quelled  as  swiftly  under  a  patience  that  looked  as 
if  it  had  been  learned  through  much  rebuff. 

"Then  you're  not  Mr.  Dickerman?"  she  asked. 

"No."  He  sacrificed  Dickie  without  an  instant's 
scruple.  "  He  doesn't  think  he  can  use  it.  He  believes 
he  may  have  more  of  the  same  kind." 

She  made  a  movement  to  take  the  story,  but  he 
closed  his  hand  upon  it.  Thereupon  she  waited  for 
anything  further  he  might  have  to  say.  His  inexplicable 
mortification  impressed  itself  upon  her  then,  and  she 
tried  to  help  him. 

"I  can't  wonder,"  she  said.  "It's  presumption  in 
me  to  jump  into  a  pool  where  there  are  such  big  fish. 


THE  PRIVATE  SOLDIER  243 

Of  course  nobody'd  see  me.  The  other  tails  and  fins 
are  flashing  so!"  Her  big,  sweet  mouth  broadened  into 
a  smile.  "No  magazine  has  such  a  list  of  contributors 
as  yours.  And  they  do  their  best  work  for  you.  You 
must  offer  them  big  bribes,  to  publish  such  good  stuff 
anonymously." 

Perry  felt  his  face  crimsoning  with  pleasure.  He 
could  hardly  help  rising  to  make  her  a  bow,  and  mur- 
mur his  delighted  appreciation. 

"You  like  it  then?"  he  speciously  inquired.  "You 
like  the  Flywheel?" 

She  answered  without  an  instant's  pause. 

"Oh,  it's  superb!  But  I  can't  help  thinking — you'll 
pardon  me,  won't  you? — it's  a  mistake  to  keep  the  con- 
tributors anonymous.  Folks  are  so  stupid,  most  of 
them.  They  don't  recognize  the  master  hand  unless 
it  signs  its  name.  Some  of  us  do,  and  it  makes  us  fear- 
fully conceited.  But  you  can't  build  up  a  circulation 
out  of  the  elect,  now  can  you?  There  aren't  enough 
of  us." 

Then  she  laughed  unaffectedly  over  her  cockiness, 
and  he  joined  her,  taking  up  the  current  number  of  the 
Flywheel,  and  asking,  with  a  shamefacedness  she  could 
not  penetrate, — 

"Run  over  the  contents,  will  you,  and  name  the  con- 
tributors?" 

She  did  it  without  reflection.  There  were  a  dozen 
names,  four  of  them  as  significant  as  the  modern  list 
affords,  and  the  others  of  the  well-known  best  in  an 
inferior  circle.  As  she  ran  them  rapidly  through,  Perry 
felt  himself  tingling  with  the  pleasure  of  it.  This  he 
had  done;  if  he  could  not  create,  he  could  at  least  dupli- 


244  VANISHING  POINTS 

cate  the  best  makers  so  that  fine  eyes  and  fine  ears 
could  hardly  tell  the  difference,  which  might,  after  all, 
be  sometimes  in  his  favor. 

"  Thank  you,"  he  said  soberly  at  the  end,  but  she 
could  not  know  exactly  what  his  gratitude  was  for. 
Suddenly  he  found  he  was  throwing  prudence  and  a 
dozen  lesser  bits  of  ballast  overboard,  and  admitting 
her  to  the  inside  of  his  mind  where  he  conceived  and 
plotted.  "See  here,"  he  said,  "do  you  want  me  to 
tell  you  what  I  should  do  with  this  story?"  His  hand 
had  not  left  her  manuscript.  Now  it  beat  upon  it 
with  an  indicating  finger. 

She  nodded. 

"I  should  give  it  to  the  Councillor." 

"  The  Councillor!  I  shouldn't  dare.  It  isn't  for  the 
likes  of  me." 

"The  Councillor  will  jump  at  it." 

"But  you  didn't  jump." 

He  temporized.  "It's  a  bully  story,"  he  said. 
"There's  been  nothing  like  it  in  a  year's  issue  of  all  the 
magazines,  the  whole  posse  of  them." 

"But  there's  an  out  about  it  or  you'd  take  it  your- 
self." 

"I  don't  say  there  isn't — for  the  Flywheel.  But  you 
try  the  Councillor.  And — "  he  looked  her  straight  in 
the  eye,  to  make  her,  if  he  could,  share  his  conviction — 
"and  not  alone.  With  five  others  like  it." 

"A  series?" 

"Yes.  The  minute  I'd  read  this  I  saw  what  they 
could  be.  Don't  you  see,  you  could  take  the  sixteen- 
year  old  girl  and  put  her  into  the  shop,  to  substitute 
for  her  sister,  so  the  sister  can  make  her  wedding-clothes. 


THE  PRIVATE  SOLDIER  245 

The  family  need  never  know  who  it  was  the  sister  was 
engaged  to,  but  when  Rosa  gets  into  the  shop  she  finds 
it's  that  frightful  Lecorescor — " 

One  by  one  they  went  over  them,  from  the  grand- 
father to  the  child,  and  stabbed  the  tragedy  of  each. 
Now  the  girl  talked  faster  than  he.  Color  came  into 
her  face;  she  flashed  and  charmed  unconsciously. 

"Of  course  I  can,"  she  kept  saying.  "Of  course! 
Why,  it's  the  story  of  the  family.  This  little  sketch 
only  begins  it.  How  stupid  I  was ! ' ' 

Then  only  did  he  give  her  back  her  manuscript. 

"Got  any  more  in  your  head?"  he  asked,  with  a 
misleading  lightness.  It  covered  an  almost  fatherly 
anxiety.  He  wanted  her  to  succeed.  It  seemed  worth 
any  sacrifice. 

She  laughed  back  at  him  out  of  that  new  brilliancy. 

" Lots! "  she  said  almost  defiantly,  as  if  she  challenged 
him  to  dispute  it.  "If  I  could  only  get  time,  I  should 
glut  the  market.  The  supervisors  keep  us  frightfully 
busy  doing  fool  things.  But — "  she  lifted  her  head  to 
its  little  willful  pose — "I  shall  get  time.  I'm  deter- 
mined."^ 

Perry  was  looking  at  her  narrowly,  partly  because 
it  was  evident  that  she  would  soon  go  and  it  seemed 
desirable  to  learn  her  face  by  heart,  and  also  to  come 
to  some  understanding  of  a  will  so  secure  that  it  pre- 
dicted what  must  be. 

"Do  you  always  do  what  you  determine  on?"  he 
asked,  so  seriously  that  she  answered,  not  out  of  her 
whimsical  mood  of  the  previous  moment,  but  with  a 
soft  earnestness, — 

"I  try  to,  when  it's  right." 


246  VANISHING  POINTS 

Then,  as  his  face  continued  to  interrogate  her  with 
its  painful  appeal,  she  saw  that  more  was  required  of 
her.  "We  must,"  she  ventured,  from  the  shyness  of 
the  unaccustomed  preacher.  "We  must,  mustn't  we? " 

"Must  what?" 

"We  must  determine  on  things  and  then  just  do 
them." 

He  stared  down  at  his  hand  playing  with  the  paper- 
cutter,  and  did  not  look  up  even  though  he  knew,  by 
the  little  preparatory  rustle,  that  in  an  instant  she  would 

go. 

"Sit  still,"  he  said.    "I  want  to  ask  you  something." 

So  she  kept  her  seat  and  was  very  quiet,  watching 
his  face  grow  graver  than  the  moment  seemed  to 
warrant. 

"It's  about  a  story,"  he  began.  "I  want  you  to  tell 
me  what  you  think  could  be  done  with  it." 

"You  want  me  to  do  it?"  she  asked  alertly. 

"I  don't  know.  Maybe  I  do.  Maybe  I  want  you  to 
collaborate.  I  fancy  I've  got  to  have  a  hand  in  it  my- 
self. We  might  call  it  'The  Mirror',  or  something  of 
that  sort.  It's  the  story  of  a  man  who  found  he  could 
only  reflect  things.  He  couldn't  give  out  any  light  of 
his  own.  Understand?" 

"No,"  she  answered  frankly. 

"Well,  to  illustrate,  here  are  you,  writing  stories. 
You  think  of  'em— " 

"They  come  to  me." 

"It's  all  one.  But  so  far  as  you  know,  the  story 
springs,  in  the  form  you  finally  use,  from  your  own 
brain.  Of  course  you're  indebted  to  previous  observa- 
tion, a  million  hints  from  without.  But  you  take  those 


THE  PRIVATE  SOLDIER  247 

million  hints  and  fuse  and  color  and  shape  in  your  own 
private  workshop — your  brain.  That's  what  you  do, 
or  think  you  do:  for  after  all  none  of  us  knows  really 
much  about  it." 

"  That's  what  I  think  I  do." 

"Now  take  another  kind  of  brain,  the  brain  of  the 
man  we  spoke  of.  That's  a  workshop  too,  but  it's  dif- 
ferent. The  tools  are  about  the  same,  for  he  turns  out 
the  brand  of  article  you  do;  but  the  beginning,  the 
inception,  is  different.  You  work — or  you  think  you 
work — without  a  pattern." 

She  had  fallen  in  with  the  fancy. 

"I  make  my  own  pattern,"  she  said  quickly.  "But 
I  do  it  only  because  I've  seen  so  many  thousand  pat- 
terns cut  by  master  workmen  before  me.  Still  I  think 
my  pattern  is  my  own." 

"Exactly!  but  the  man  we're  dealing  with  can't  make 
his  pattern.  He  can  only  work  after  somebody  has 
given  him  a  model.  He  can  do  it  then,  stunning  stuff, 
you  know,  but  it's  never  anything  but  a  copy.  It's 
the  difference  between  Cellini  and  a  clever  silversmith 
who  is  merely  clever.  You  take  him  a  vase  of  Cellini 
and  he  can  copy  it  exquisitely,  but  he  couldn't  have 
designed  it." 

"Isn't  that  the  difference  between  an  artisan  and 
an  artist?" 

"I  fancy  so.  Well,  now,  an  artisan  may  be  honest, 
usually  is.  But  if  he  stole  patterns  whenever  he  got  a 
chance,  and  said,  '  They  're  mine.  They're  the  real 
thing/  he  wouldn't  be  honest,  now,  would  he?" 

"Oh,  no.    He'd  be  a  scamp." 

"He  might  do  it  at  first  as  a  kind  of  joke,  and  be- 


248  VANISHING  POINTS 

cause  he  was  really  rather  vain  and  it  tickled  him  to 
see  he  could  do  the  trick  as  well  as  anybody,  only  show 
him  how.  But  one  day  it  might  occur  to  him  that  he 
was  too  much  of  a  copyist.  It  had  ceased  to  be  a  ques- 
tion of  filling  orders  in  the  intellectual  workshop.  It 
was  everything  now." 

"It  had  gone  into  his  life." 

"Yes;  he  was  getting  to  be  obedient  to  the  chaps 
that  were  stronger  than  he.  I  don't  know  that  they're 
stronger.  Only  they  have  such  an  infernal  way  of 
seeming  original  and  bossing  from  that  side  of  things. 
And  he's  made  only  to  reflect,  and  he  can't  help  re- 
flecting. What's  he  going  to  do?" 

He  looked  up  at  her  now,  and  found  she  was  resting 
both  elbows  on  the  table  and  had  propped  her  chin  on 
her  hands,  in  the  attitude  of  deep  deliberation.  She  did 
not  answer  him  with  a  glance.  The  hypothetical  man 
evidently  seemed  of  enormous  importance  to  her,  suf- 
ficient to  demand  the  most  earnest  thought;  but  her 
air  also  said  that  she  found  no  definite  personal  issue 
in  the  case. 

"He  was  meant  to  be  a  private  soldier,"  she  half- 
declared,  half-inquired  for  confirmation. 

"It  would  seem  so." 

"Nothing  but  his  own  will  would  make  him  a  leader? " 

"I  doubt  if  his  will  could  do  it.  I  told  you  he  wasn't 
altogether  weak, — at  least,  he  doesn't  seem  so  to  me, — 
but  he's  no  initiative.  He's  simply  got  to  copy,  in  his 
work,  and,  I  almost  think,  he's  got  to  obey  in  his  life. 
Now  what's  going  to  prevent  him  from  sagging  more 
and  more,  leaning  on  other  wills,  coming  at  call,  even 
doing  the  things  he  knows  ought  not  to  be  done?  There's 


THE  PRIVATE  SOLDIER  249 

a  kind  of  a  dry  rot  in  it.  That's  what  I'm  asking  you 
to  save  him  from." 

She  took  her  elbows  off  the  table  and  sat  up  straight, 
looking  at  him  now  as  he  looked  at  her.  Their  eyes 
met,  and  each  recognized  the  spirit  behind  the  darken- 
ing pupils. 

"He  mustn't  do  the  things  that  ought  not  to  be 
done/'  she  said,  concisely.  "He  simply  mustn't." 

"But  he's  a  private  soldier.    We  began  with  that." 

"He  mustn't  serve  under  any  captain  that  isn't — 
oh,  isn't  perfectly  splendid!  He  mustn't  fight  in  any 
cause  that  isn't  just." 

"Then  it's  the  question  of  the  captain?" 

"Yes.  At  first,  until  he's  trained  and  trained,  and 
fought  and  fought,  until  he's  got  his  will  tempered — oh, 
well,  then,  you  know,  I  think  he'd  be  promoted." 

"You  do?" 

She  nodded.  The  laughter  ran  into  his  face,  and  hers 
answered  it. 

"Do  you  know,"  he  said,  confidentially,  "I'm  not 
sure  he'd  want  to  be  promoted.  I  think  it  would  scare 
him." 

"It's  my  opinion  half  of  them  are  scared,"  she  an- 
swered,— "the  leaders.  That's  why  they  are  so  big. 
They're  brave  enough  to  fight  the  foe  within  at  the 
same  time  they're  fighting  the  one  without." 

She  had  risen  now,  and  he  did  not  try  to  keep  her. 

"I  wonder,"  he  was  musing,  "whether  it  is  a  ques- 
tion of  captains!  Strong-willed — "  He  looked  at  her 
as  if  he  inventoried  her  qualities,  and  she  gazed  inno- 
cently back  at  him,  waiting  to  say  good-by.  "Strong- 
willed,  sound-hearted,  kind — and  beautiful." 


250  VANISHING  POINTS 

Then  he  seemed  impatiently  to  put  that  by,  as  if  he 
were  talking  foolishness  she  could  not  yet  be  trusted 
with.  He  came  back  to  his  every-day  look  of  accessible, 
charming  good  humor. 

"  Would  you  mind,"  he  asked,  in  an  off-hand  fashion, 
"  leaving  me  your  address?  I  have  an  idea  I  shall  want 
to  see  you  again  about  this — or  something." 

She  wrote  the  address  in  a  firm  hand,  putting  the 
sheet  of  yellow  paper  he  gave  her  flat  against  the  wall. 

"  Thank  you,"  he  said,  and  she  responded,  at  the 
door,  with  a  kind  little  smile  and  a  good-by.  She  was 
over  the  sill,  when  he  bent  quickly,  opened  the  drawer, 
and  took  out  the  letter  he  had  tossed  there  an  hour 
ago.  He  strode  after  her,  holding  it  outstretched. 

"  Would  you  mind,"  he  asked,  in  a  laughing  earnest, 
" would  you  mind  mailing  this?" 

She  took  it  with  no  appearance  of  surprise. 

"Delighted,"  she  sai<J.    "Good-by  again." 

He  was  at  the  head  of  the  stairs  looking  down  at  her 
nodding  plume. 

"I  had  a  fancy,"  he  called,  in  an  exhilaration  she 
did  not  understand,  "to  have  you  mail  it.  It's  for 
luck." 


THE  CLUE 

THE  one  detective  story  I  have  seen  worked 
out  through  the  inevitable  lines  converging  to 
disclosure  had  forced  itself  on  Ralph  Master- 
man  and  me,  and  the  end  touched  us  vitally,  as  it  did  its 
principals.  At  least  it  opened  our  eyes  to  some  of  the 
causes  of  things,  strained  our  skulls  to  the  point  of 
dangerously  cracking  the  sutures,  and  probably  in- 
duced a  multiplicity  of  convolutions  in  the  sensitive 
matter  inside. 

We  had  come  home  from  exploring  in  Peru,  our  minds 
full  of  mountain  chains  and  lakes  and  tamed  volcanoes, 
and  we  unreasonably  hoped — or  said  we  did — that 
now  we  were  going  to  settle  down,  perhaps  to  jour- 
nalism. But  great  winds  were  blowing  through  our 
memories,  big  challenges  to  dominate  the  earth  and 
open  up  more  of  her  hidden  passes,  so  that  when  our 
names  were  heard,  in  fifty  years  or  so,  men  would 
say:  "They?  Oh,  they  did  the  last  exploring  left  to 
do.  Yes,  they  wrote  finis  on  the  geographical  earth, 
and  shut  the  book."  Still  the  aunts — each  of  us  pos- 
sessed a  fostering,  doting  aunt — thought  we  were  going 
to  stay  at  home. 

It  was  the  first  day  of  our  return  when  we  were  con- 
fronted with  our  riddle.  The  town  itself,  a  topping 
suburb  thinking  no  end  of  itself  and  refusing  to  be 
annexed,  we  found  unchanged.  Citizens,  men  and 

251 


252  VANISHING  POINTS 

women,  were  still  telephoning  one  another  about  the 
advisability  of  a  pleasure  drive  along  the  lake,  the  only 
stone  of  stumbling  being  the  name.  Should  it  be  Elm 
Road  or  Laurel  Drive?  They  were  still  acutely  anxious 
over  the  dark  doings  of  milkmen,  and  the  consequent 
jeopardy  of  babies,  and  they  almost  prayed  for  par- 
asites to  feed  on  forest  pests.  It  was  all  a  kind  of 
beloved,  exasperating  heaven  on  earth  to  us,  who 
had  now  known  the  winds  in  then*  birthplace,  and  en- 
tered into  the  secret  places  of  the  snow.  But  one  thing 
had  lamentably  changed.  Rose  Red  was  married. 
That  we  knew,  for  the  imminence  of  it  had  been  one 
among  the  determining  whips  of  fate  to  start  us  off  to 
Peru,  two  men  children  afire  with  youth,  and  vibrating 
the  chords  of  hearts  denied.  She  was  married  to  a  man 
overweeningly  rich,  and  of  no  occupation  but  to  look 
"  stunning",  and  she  was  not  happy.  We  came  home 
from  that  first "  evening"  given  in  our  honor,  an  evening 
marked  by  the  sponge  lady-fingers  we  knew  and  the 
old  conscientious  fruit  punch,  and  mounted,  with  one 
mind,  to  the  loft,  that  had  served  as  our  youthful 
playground  and  tophet  of  confusion.  There  we  lighted 
up  and  smoked  madly  in  silence.  Then : 

" She's  not  Rose  Red  any  more,"  said  Ralph,  jerking 
out  the  words  as  if  somehow  I  had  done  it  all,  and  he 
were  angry. 

"No,"  said  I.  "She's  Snow  White.  She's  not 
happy." 

' '  She  never  knew  a  day's  unhappiness.  He's  brought 
it  on  her  somehow." 

' l  Oh,  yes.    He's  brought  it  on  her." 

"Well,"  said  Masterman,  fractiously,  throwing  the 


THE  CLUE  253 

ball  to  me  as  he  always  did  when  there  was  a  doubt  of 
the  game,  "are  you  going  to  do  anything  about  it?" 

That  was  the  way  he  had  snapped  at  me  when  I  gave 
out  at  twenty-three  thousand  feet  altitude,  and  he  was 
in  mortal  fear  lest  he  shouldn't  get  me  down.  It  had 
nearly  done  for  me  that  tune,  because  I  wasted  breath 
in  a  thin  hoot  of  a  laugh,  and  I  had  no  breath  to  spare. 
But  to-day  I  didn't  feel  like  laughing. 

"He's  a  good-looking  chap,"  I  meditated. 

"  Six  foot  one,"  said  Masterman,  in  bitter  disparage- 
ment. Masterman  is  stocky,  and  not  over  five  feet 
eleven,  a  Norse  giant  of  a  hero. 

"I  mean  he's  got  no  tricks.  He  looks  you  in  the  eye. 
He  takes  his  fruit  punch  like  a  man,  and  not  as  if  he 
couldn't  wait  for  the  whiskey  at  home  on  the  side- 
board. Look  as  if  the  whiskey  wouldn't  phase  him, 
either." 

"Oh,  no,  he  ain't  a  soaker,  if  that's  what  you  mean. 
He's  all  right,  very  fit,  clean,  fond  enough  of  his  tailor, 
not  too  fond.  No,  whatever's  wrong,  his  shop  ain't 
going  to  hang  out  a  sign.  We've  got  to  go  in  and 
examine  the  goods." 

"We've  no  license,"  said  I,  ruefully. 

"What?" 

"Rose  Red  didn't  marry  us — individually  or  collec- 
tively." 

"No,"  said  Masterman,  setting  his  mouth  in  its 
implication  of  bedrock.  "But  I  don't  see  Rose  Red 
fade  out  to  Snow  White  without  knowing  the  reason 
why.  And  if  I  find  out  the  reason  why,  and  any  man's 
guilty —  "  Here  he  paused,  and  we  smoked  on. 

The  houses  our  aunts  had  inherited  were  side  by  side, 


254  VANISHING  POINTS 

with  a  little  gate  in  the  garden  fence  between,  so  that 
Masterman  and  I  practically  lived  together  as  we  al- 
ways had.  The  aunts,  each  in  a  morning  muslin  or  an 
afternoon  silk,  made  according  to  an  extinct  ideal,  sat 
each  on  her  own  veranda  and  knitted  rhythmically 
and  widened  aristocratic  old  nostrils  to  the  honey- 
suckles. We  had  lost  no  time  in  pumping  these  ladies 
about  the  standing  and  habits  of  the  husband  of  that 
dear  perfection  known  once  in  the  loft  as  Rose  Red. 

"What's  the  fellow's  name?"  I  inquired  over  my 
third  egg,  while  Aunt  Celesta  beamed  at  me,  a  light 
blue  beam  out  of  faded  eyes  behind  a  rim  of  gold,  "the 
one  Rose  married?  " 

"Why,  you  met  him  last  night,"  said  Aunt  Celesta, 
pained  at  somebody's  lack  of  observance  in  not  having 
made  the  presentation  clear.  "Weren't  you  intro- 
duced?" 

"I  dare  say,"  said  I,  seeing  I  might  have  jumped 
more  dexterously  into  the  heart  of  the  puzzle.  "Ham- 
Hn,  isn't  it?  Good  fellow?" 

"Admirable,"  said  Aunt  Celesta,  warmly.  She  was 
now  rescuing  a  fly  from  the  cream  jug,  and  I  read  in 
her  face  the  conflict  between  ruth  over  insect  life  un- 
timely ended,  horrified  estimate  of  the  fly's  culpability, 
based  on  the  propaganda  of  modern  theories  touching 
disease,  disgust  at  her  task,  and  the  query  of  her  fight- 
ing soul  whether  she  must  really  sacrifice  the  cream, 
though  the  kitchen  supply  wasn't  at  its  maximum. 
She  had  very  little  testimony  to  contribute. 

"Yes,  a  nice  young  man,"  she  said,  raising  the  screen 
and  conveying  the  fly  into  a  wider  world  to  dry  his 
wings.  ' '  Very  nice,  indeed. ' ' 


THE  CLUE  255 

Of  her  last  scruple  I  relieved  her,  pouring  myself 
cream  with  a  dashing  hand,  and  offering  her  the  cup 
to  fill. 

"  He's  got  money,  hasn't  he?  "    I  plunged. 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Aunt  Celesta.  "  They  're  rich,  really. 
Quite  the  wealthiest  people  in  town." 

"Live  well?" 

That  question,  Aunt  Celesta,  I  could  see,  considered 
coarse.  She  answered  rather  stiffly  and  to  no  purpose, 
and  I  drank  the  coffee  I  didn't  want  and  went  through 
the  little  gate  to  find  Ralph.  He  was  coming  toward 
the  little  gate  to  meet  me,  and  as  by  one  consent  Aunt 
Clara  and  Aunt  Celesta  pottered  out  on  their  verandas, 
exchanged  a  beaming  smile  indicating  their  community 
of  blessedness  in  the  possession  of  nephews,  and 
settled  to  the  forenoon's  task  of  keeping  moderately 
alive. 

"I  can't  find  out  a  damned  thing,"  said  Masterman, 
incautiously. 

At  the  qualifying  word  each  aunt  jerked  her  head 
galvanically,  but  settled  it  again,  knowing  she  could 
not,  as  the  older  novelists  had  it,  have  heard 
aright. 

"There's  nothing  to  find  out  "  said  I,  drearily.  "What 
do  you  suppose  two  aunts" — we  always  spoke  of  them 
generically  as  if  the  relationship  made  a  type — "what 
would  they  know  of  a  chap  of  thirty-three  that  walked 
right,  and  talked  right,  and  dressed  right?  Nothing, 
old  man,  and  you  know  it." 

Masterman  hit  my  foot  with  his. 

"There  he  is,"  said  he.    "There's  the  fellow  now." 

It  was  Frederick  Hamlin,  and  he  was  coming  in  at 


256  VANISHING  POINTS 

Aunt  Clara's  gate.  He  looked  very  well  in  the  morning 
light,  slightly  older,  rather  faded  about  the  eyes,  and 
he  walked  in  haste,  as  if  he  came  for  an  end.  We 
turned  with  an  absurd  eagerness  considering  the 
slightness  of  our  acquaintance,  and  met  him  midway  of 
the  yard.  Masterman  almost  stammered  in  his  desire  to 
shunt  him  away  from  the  aunts  and  get  him  to  our- 
selves. 

"Come  on  up  in  the  loft,"  said  he,  with  what  seemed 
an  exaggerated  cordiality.  "Unless  you  were  coming 
to  call." 

"No,"  said  Hamlin,  in  his  rather  grave  voice.  He 
stopped  half-way  up  the  path  and  adjusted  his  eye- 
glasses. That  led  my  eyes  to  his,  and  I  saw  what  I 
had  not  the  night  before,  in  our  stiff  encounter,  that 
they  looked  very  tired,  slightly  apprehensive  and  that 
there  were  wrinkles  about  them  not  accordant  with  his 
comparative  youth.  "No,"  he  repeated,  lifting  his 
hat  to  one  aunt  and  making  a  comprehensive  bow  to 
both.  "I  came  to  see  you  two." 

So  we  went  up,  by  its  crazy  outside  stairs,  to  the  loft. 
He  looked  about  him  curiously  while  Masterman  cleared 
a  seat;  he  seemed  pleased  to  find  himself  there.  Noth- 
ing could  adequately  describe  the  loft,  even  an  inven- 
tory. You'd  have  gone  daft  over  the  collection  of 
things,  the  chronological  sequence  of  them,  from  tops 
and  Happy  Jacks  and  fairy  books  to  the  electrical 
apparatus  of  our  college  days,  and  the  textbooks  of  no 
use  to  us  now,  though  we  were  grateful  to  them:  for  on 
them  we  had  built  our  degrees. 

"I  didn't  know  there  was  such  a  place  in  town," 
said  Hamlin. 


THE  CLUE  257 

" There  isn't  another,"  said  Masterman.  "This 
grew.  We  couldn't  make  it.  Nobody  could." 

He  had  got  out  tobacco,  and  Hamlin  accepted  with 
an  air  of  not  caring  very  much  whether  he  had  it  or 
not.  We  smoked,  and  Masterman  deliberately  began 
trying  to  turn  him  inside  out.  He  asked  him  questions 
even:  what  did  he  think  of  this,  of  that,  current  topics 
all;  and  I  could  see  he  meant  to  get  at  the  back  of 
Hamlin's  mind,  to  roll  it  over  and  see  what  it  could 
mean  as  it  affected  Rose  Red.  But  Masterman  wasn't 
clever  at  that  kind  of  thing.  He  was  too  simple-honest, 
too  impetuous,  too  much  off  his  guard,  with  his  bright 
eyes  telling  how  much  he  wanted  to  know.  Nor  was 
I  up  to  it  myself.  He  and  I  were  sons  of  the  earth, 
made  to  serve  her,  and  even  on  occasion  dominate  her. 
We  didn't  belong  in  lawyers'  pens.  But  Hamlin  an- 
swered him  patiently,  candidly,  it  was  evident,  and 
with  no  particular  interest  in  his  own  tastes  as  he  was 
called  upon  to  map  them  out.  Yes,  he  had  travelled 
extensively  in  Europe,  not  beyond.  No,  he  wasn't  a 
socialist.  Some  very  good  fellows  were,  he  believed. 
He  understood  there  was  a  lot  to  complain  of  in  the 
system  of  things.  And  so  on,  a  tepid  answer  bearing 
testimony  to  his  preference  for  the  middle  course,  but 
always  curving  back  the  talk,  when  he  could  manage 
it,  to  our  own  exploits  in  Peru.  He  persisted  in  re- 
garding them  as  exploits;  and  when  we  decried  them 
slightly,  he  said,  with  a  conclusiveness  he  evidently 
thought  unanswerable: 

"Well,  but  they've  been  written  up,  you  know." 

We  laughed  rather  shamefacedly,  just  because  we 
were  so  ingenuously  pleased  to  have  them  written  up. 


258  VANISHING  POINTS 

He  gave  us  no  time  to  deny  our  just  sentiments,  but 
plumped  at  us  a  question  that  had  mysteriously,  as 
he  saw  it,  some  tremendous  weight. 

" Where  are  you  going  next?" 

We  looked  at  each  other  guiltily.  Our  talk  together, 
up  to  this  time,  had  always  been  prefaced  by  "ifs". 
//  we  should  cut  stick  again!  We  knew  pretty  well 
geographically  what  we  should  do,  but  hardly  what  we 
had  a  right  to  do,  with  two  age-foundered  aunts  in 
harbor. 

"The  aunts  think  we're  going  to  settle  down,"  I 
temporized,  and  Hamlin  answered  me  almost  passion- 
ately: 

"Settle  down!  You!  after  all  you've  done?  You 
won't.  You  can't.  I  say,  you  two — "  His  voice 
dropped  here.  It  became  the  pleading  of  a  boy  who  has 
no  right  to  the  secret  passion  he  is  begging  you  to 
appease — "whatever  it  is,  let  me — let  me  go  with  you." 

Masterman  grew  white  with  the  pure  surprise  of  it. 
I  lost  my  breath  for  a  second,  and  perhaps  I,  too,  looked 
white;  but  I  picked  up  in  time  to  blurt  out: 

"But  you  can't,  you  know.  You — "  Here  I  stopped, 
but  they  both  knew  perfectly  well  what  my  intemperate 
tongue  would  have  added:  "You're  married  to  Rose 
Red.  You're  bound  with  gold  chains  to  the  heavenly 
chariot  of  heart's  content.  You've  got  to  make  her 
happiness.  You  can't  go  off  climbing  peaks,  and  freez- 
ing and  starving  and  fighting  the  horrible  goddess 
life.  You've  got  to  stay  here  and  cherish  life,  make  a 
warm  nest  for  it.  You're  the  husband  of  Rose  Red." 

And  while  we  stared  at  one  another  in  an  extremity 
of  feeling  that  seemed  to  have  no  adequate  cause,  a 


THE  CLUE  259 

voice  came  from  below,  flute-like,  a  voice  we 
knew. 

"  You  boys  up  there?" 

Masterman  was  out  of  his  seat  and,  with  one  bound, 
at  the  door.  I  drew  forward  a  little  rocking-chair  I 
knew.  It  had  been  sitting  in  a  corner  ever  since  we 
went  away,  covered  with  the  flag  Masterman  and  I  had 
worked  two  summers  to  buy.  (Masterman  used  to  say 
we  worked  for  it  till  nobody  would  have  us,  and  then 
we  worked  the  aunts.) 

"Why,"  said  Hamlin,  in  a  tone  of  wonder,  " that's 
Rose." 

"Yes,"  said  I,  in  excitement  and  a  momentary  base 
willingness  he  should  see  there  were  more  roses  than 
one.  There  was  his  Rose,  but  there  might  be  ours 
too.  "That's  Rose." 

And  meantime  her  light  step  had  brought  her  up  the 
stair,  and  Masterman  was  conducting  her  in — this  with 
a  tender,  blundering  haste,  as  if  nothing  so  precious  as 
this  visit  had  ever  happened,  and  yet  nothing  could 
have  been  so  surely  expected,  because  it  tailed  on  to 
the  visits  of  long  ago.  She  was  over  the  sill,  a  wraith 
of  a  thing,  with  her  shadowy  hair  and  pale  cheeks  that 
used  to  be  so  bright,  and  Hamlin  was  the  first  she 
saw.  Her  eyes  fell  upon  him  before  ever  her  smiling 
at  Masterman  had  done,  and  as  she  saw  him  she  shrank 
and  withered.  It  was  a  horrible  sight,  that  first  instinc- 
tive recoil  from  the  man  she  should  have  welcomed. 
Hamlin  saw  it  as  I  did,  and  he  too  shrank  and  paled ;  and 
for  that  second  the  two  stood  there,  the  width  of  the 
room  between  them,  as  if  it  were  some  awful,  unseen 
gulf.  She  recovered  herself  instantly,  the  woman's  way. 


260  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Fred!"  she  said,  with  a  pretty  intonation  of  affec- 
tionate surprise.  "I  didn't  know  you  were  here." 

"No,"  said  he,  awkwardly,  "I  knew  you  didn't." 

He,  too,  had  risen,  and  we  all  seemed,  in  a  foolish 
rivalry,  to  be  offering  her  a  seat.  In  smiling  control 
of  herself  now,  she  took  the  little  chair;  but  Hamlin  did 
not  return  to  his. 

"I've  got  to  go  on  up  to  the  Branch,"  he  said,  in 
quite  a  commonplace  tone,  "to  see  if  my  saddle's 
mended.  Shall  I  drop  in  for  you  on  the  way  back?  " 

"You  needn't,  dear,"  said  she,  in  her  nicest  manner. 
"I  shall  be  home  long  before  you." 

Then  Hamlin  went,  and  Ralph  and  I  stood  at  the 
stairhead  and  called  down  robust  good-bys,  the  more 
scrupulous  in  that  it  somehow  seemed  to  us  his  stock 
was  very  patently  depreciated;  and  we  returned  to 
Rose  who,  with  her  hand  on  the  old  brown  volume  of 
Grimm  to  which  her  chair  was  neighbor,  was,  for  the 
first  time  since  our  coming,  Rose  Red  again.  I  could 
have  cried — Ralph  says  he  did  feel  his  throat  balling 
up — to  see  how  swiftly  and  pathetically  she  had  taken 
on  her  own  look,  the  look  of  one  undaunted  by  any 
aspect  of  life  because  life  had  always  been  so  kind  to 
her. 

"Now,  boys,  talk,"  said  she,  and  though  we  under- 
stood this  meant  Peru,  we  had  for  the  moment  nothing 
to  tell.  But  she  questioned  us  skilfully,  avowed  her 
ignorance  of  high  places,  wanted  to  learn  what  posies 
grew  wild  there,  and  before  we  knew  it,  we  were  talk- 
ing fourteen  to  the  dozen,  and  had  forgotten  such  a 
chap  as  Hamlin  ever  lived.  She,  too,  forgot  all  about 
her  pact  of  being  home  before  him,  and  one  o'clock 


THE  CLUE  261 

struck  the  hour  when  our  suburb  dines  the  year  round, 
before  she  remembered  that  this  was  New  England, 
and  not  Peru.  Then  she  rose  in  a  gayety  of  haste,  and 
Masterman,  foolishly  prolonging  old  time  cheer,  broke 
our  moment  into  bits. 

"  We're  nothing  but  blooming  rattletraps,"  said  he. 
"How  about  you,  Rose?  We  haven't  said  a  word 
about  you." 

She  paled.  The  smitten  look  came  back.  Some 
physical  blow  might  well  have  struck  all  eagerness 
from  her  face.  , 

"I?"  she  maundered.  "Oh,  you  know  all  about  me. 
I  haven't  been  to  Peru." 

And  she  smiled  at  us  in  the  old  dear  way,  and  took 
her  parasol  and  was  gone.  We  had  no  conclusions  to 
exchange,  Masterman  and  I.  She  had  not  been  married 
two  years,  and  she  was  at  bitter  odds  with  something. 
Why? 

"Do  you  know,"  said  Ralph  that  night,  as  we  sat  in 
the  silence  that  served  us  for  great  companionship, 
"it's  occurred  to  me  that  the  detective  stories  are  all 
rotten." 

"Why?" 

"Because  they  puddle  over  what  happened.  They 
don't  care  a  hang  what  made  it  happen.  A  man  is 
killed.  We  try  to  guess  who  killed  him.  If  we  had 
any  effective  force,  we  should  find  out  why  he  was 
likely  to  be  killed,  and  find  out  before  it  happened. 
Then  likely  it  wouldn't  happen  at  all." 

"You  mean,  if  Hamlin  poisoned  Rose  Red " 

"Don't!" 

"Or  she  poisoned  him,  we  should  be  all  agog  bring- 


262  VANISHING  POINTS 

ing  somebody  to  justice.  But  now,  when  they  look 
infernally  tragic,  and  yet  haven't  broken  the  law,  we 
still  ought  to  find  out  what's  doing?" 

"Yes.  Something  is  the  matter.  If  we  don't  find 
out,  we  can't  quash  it." 

"Maybe,"  I  suggested,  "it  isn't  our  business.  There's 
something  peculiarly  offensive  and  defensive  about  the 
marriage  bond." 

"It's  my  business,"  said  he  briefly,  "whether  it's 
yours  or  not." 

And  whether  I  owned  to  it  as  crudely,  I  was  watching 
and  speculating  for  all  I  was  worth.  We  watched  her 
and  we  studied  him.  All  our  conclusions  agreed.  She 
spoke  to  him  sweetly  from  what  seemed  even  a  com- 
passionate regard,  she  fulfilled  toward  him  all  the  out- 
ward observances  of  courtesy.  But  she  was  either 
afraid  of  him  or  she  had  for  him  some  degree  of  that 
repulsion  which  is  scorn.  He,  too,  was  afraid,  not  of 
her,  it  might  be,  but  of  some  unspoken  inner  judgment, 
whereof  he  caught  the  savor.  He  did  not  propitiate 
her.  He  was,  we  began  dimly  to  see,  too  reasonably 
constituted,  grounded  by  birth  and  tradition  in  the 
rules  of  living  as  they  obtain  between  woman  and 
man.  Yet  plainly  there  was  an  inner  judgment  of 
hers,  and  it  did  set  them  irremediably  apart.  And  at 
this  stage,  seeing  it  was  something  between  the  two  that 
in  no  manner  concerned  any  one  outside  their  little 
kingdom  of  revolt,  we  gave  up  the  job.  It  was  all  very 
well  for  Masterman  to  argue  it  was  his  business  be- 
cause it  affected  Rose.  It  simply  wasn't,  and  he  knew 
it.  Nobody  could  help.  We  must  leave  Rose  Red  to 
her  imprisonment  in  the  dungeon  she  had  found,  by 


THE  CLUE  263 

ill  chance,  within  her  castle  of  delight.  We  would  go 
away.  If  Rose  had  been  afraid  of  her  husband  we 
couldn't  have  gone;  but  it  was  apparent  that  both  of 
them  were  afraid  of  some  trap  between  them.  And 
whoever  had  set  it,  the  trap  was  theirs. 

"But,"  said  Masterman,  when  we  owned  our  com- 
mon aversion  to  the  case  as  a  case,  "something,  some- 
time, will  chuck  the  clue  into  our  hands." 

"Why  will  it?" 

"Because  that's  the  way  things  are.  I  don't  believe 
your  Burns  or  your  Sherlock  really  braids  the  rope 
that  hangs  a  man.  No,  he  braids  and  braids,  and  gets 
infernally  stale  over  it,  and  then  suddenly  some  little 
kobold  leaps  out  of  the  bush  and  twists  all  the  strands 
he's  just  made  up  his  mind  to  drop.  No,  you  do  the 
work,  your  part  of  it,  and  because  you've  done  it, 
something  passes  you  the  clue." 

"Your  rhetoric's  mixed,"  said  I. 

"No  matter.    I  know  what  I  mean — and  it's  so." 

Then  the  incredible  happened.  The  aunts,  of  all 
rooted  creatures  in  the  world,  they  who  had  been 
wedded  to  one  spot  through  all  the  years  of  our  trouble- 
some nurture,  the  aunts  disclosed  to  us  their  intention  of 
going  abroad.  We  were  mightily  pleased,  chiefly  be- 
cause that  proved  they  still  had  the  spirit  to  conceive 
it,  and  instantly  offered  to  put  them  in  the  way  of  a 
fair  start  and  a  luxurious  progress.  But  what  fell  upon 
us  then  was  the  implication  that  we  were  to  take  them. 
We  who  had  dragged  ourselves  over  unkindly  heights, 
and  snatched  breath  out  of  rarefied  air,  were  to  potter 
round  the  beaten  ways  of  Europe  with  two  darling 
spinsters,  who  might — we  were  rather  galled  under 


264  VANISHING  POINTS 

that  suspicion — have  concocted  the  scheme  for  our 
sole  benefit.  We  were  wanderers  by  nature.  It  drove 
them  to  a  mild  distraction  to  see  us  mulling  over  maps, 
picking  out  the  insufficiently  charted  spots  to  travel 
in.  Our  immediate  safety  was  assured,  so  they  be- 
nevolently reasoned,  by  going  abroad  with  them.  Thus 
were  we  to  satisfy  our  gypsy  cravings  while  sticking 
strictly  to  the  spots  whereof  picture  postals  are  made. 
If  we  were  taking  a  funicular  to  Fiesole,  we  couldn't, 
at  the  same  time,  be  rampaging  up  savage  cliffs. 

"Allee  samee,  we've  got  to  go  with  them,"  said 
Masterman,  gloomily,  when  we  met  in  the  loft  to  con- 
sider it. 

"We  owe  it  to  them,"  I  responded  in  the  old  phrase, 
from  as  inexorable  a  certainty  that  certain  debts  had  to 
be  paid. 

"Sure!  But  what  if  we  didn't?  If  two  such  infernal 
old  trumps  want  to  go  abroad  again,  why,  they've  got 
to  do  it,  that's  all,  and  go  the  way  they  like." 

This  was  in  September,  and  actually  in  October  we 
sailed,  each  of  us  the  rather  awkward  convoy  of  an 
aunt,  but  resolved  to  show  ourselves  good  and  grateful 
wards.  Hamlin  was  the  last  man  to  bid  us  good-by. 
He  came  to  the  station  where  Aunt  Clara  was  adjust- 
ing a  lavender  ribbon  on  her  trunk,  having  removed 
the  red  one  she  had  affixed  the  previous  week — this 
because  red  began  to  seem  to  her  the  color  of  universal 
choice.  He  shook  hands,  with  an  air  of  liking  us  very 
much,  and  feeling  sure  we  could  have  helped  him. 

"I  say,  you  know,"  he  volunteered,  just  as  Rose 
came  up  and  offered  to  tie  Aunt  Clara's  ribbon,  "you 
won't  forget?" 


THE  CLUE  265 

There  was  nothing  we  were  aware  of  having  promised 
to  remember;  and  he  continued  instantly,  with  the 
implication  of  suddenly  recalling  that  his  request  was 
more  important  to  him  than  to  us. 

"If  you  find  you're  going  on  any  sort  of  exploring 
trip,  just  count  me  in." 

Masterman,  with  a  rueful  look,  indicated  the  aunts 
where  they  stood,  frail,  and  yet  undaunted  in  their 
determination  to  carry  the  traditions  of  the  suburb 
into  a  foreign  continent. 

"We're  hardly  likely  to  do  much  batting  round,"  he 
suggested. 

"I  know,  I  know/7  Hamlin  concurred,  with  his 
nervous  conclusiveness.  "But  after  this — any  time, 
you  know." 

And  then  Rose  had  turned  to  us  and  said:  "Good-by, 
boys.  Good  luck."  The  smoke  of  the  train  was  casting 
its  cloud  behind,  and  for  the  first  time  we  thought  the 
aunts  trembled  before  their  venture,  and  we  snatched 
in  wild  joyousness  at  the  hope  that  they  might  give 
it  up.  We  should  have  lain  down  at  their  feet,  I  be- 
lieve, if  they  had,  and  begged  them  to  walk  on  us  to 
ways  of  security  and  peace.  But  they  called  on  the 
unchanging  fibre  within  them,  doubtless  for  our  sakes, 
and  we  dutifully  supported  them  on  board. 

The  winter  passed  in  a  conventional  progress,  under 
which  the  aunts  throve  and  Masterman  and  I  sank. 
We  learned  to  know  the  capitals  of  Europe  in  all  their 
capacity  for  giving  pain — pain  of  boredom,  wet  and 
cold.  He  and  I  hated  pensions.  The  aunts  loved  them, 
because  they  afforded  social  intercourse.  We  hated 
the  promenades  of  southern  watering-places,  and  were 


266  VANISHING  POINTS 

made  indescribably  wretched  by  being  expected  to 
flaner  before  shop  windows,  where  the  aunts  expressed 
the  most  persistent  interest  in  what  they  had  no  idea 
of  buying.  But  what  could  you  do?  They  were  dar- 
ling aunts,  and  we  owed  them  everything.  One  re- 
ward we  had :  they  seemed  to  grow  more  indestructible 
every  day,  and  we  knew  at  last  that,  if  they  had  kept 
the  life  in  our  young  bodies  by  strenuous  coddling  when 
our  pretty  mothers  died,  at  least  we  were  pumping  a 
few  extraneous  years  of  vitality  into  them  by  abetting 
them  in  sheer  fun  as  they  saw  it.  But  at  Lugano,  one 
languorous  day  in  the  early  summer,  we  gave  out.  It 
came  upon  us  simultaneously,  and  the  expression  of  it, 
uttered  while  we  sat  under  an  oleander,  sorting  picture 
cards  so  that  the  aunts  should  send  them  in  the  order 
of  topographical  lucidity,  was  my  saying,  out  of  no 
voluntary  choice,  and  hardly  knowing  why  I  said  it: 

"We  could  climb  the  Matterhorn." 

Masterman  did  not  even  answer  with  any  directness. 
He  merely  shuffled  the  cards  together  and  tucked  them 
into  their  envelope. 

"I'll  go  in  and  tell  them,"  he  said,  and  go  he  did. 

They  were  as  surprised  by  the  suddenness  of  it  as  I, 
and  chiefly  on  that  account  they  yielded.  Or  had  they 
anticipated  some  divagation  of  the  sort,  and  now  ac- 
cepted it  as  less  serious  than  they  had  feared?  Also 
the  sense  of  lightness,  of  variety,  bound  to  uplift  the 
traveller  abroad,  whispered  them  that  it  would  be  no 
ill  matter,  but  rather  a  novelty  the  more,  to  be  left 
at  Lugano  in  charge  of  their  own  fate.  They  merely 
specified  that  we  were  to  take  care  of  ourselves  and  come 
back  soon.  Of  course  we  said  nothing  about  the  Matter- 


THE  CLUE  267 

horn.  That  grim  entity  never  once  punctuated  the 
discussion.  We  merely  said  we  were  going,  with  their 
accord,  up  to  Zermatt  for  a  breath  of  mountain  air. 

To  Zermatt  we  went,  gayer  with  every  inch  of  alti- 
tude, more  like  boys  released  from  tasks  that  yesterday 
had  looked  perennial.  We  went  up  by  train,  and  also 
from  Zermatt  on,  because  we  had  to  be  back  with  the 
aunts  in  a  reasonable  time.  We  got  into  fits  of  laughter 
over  it  all,  our  dash  for  exhilaration,  and  a  little  red- 
headed English  parson  across  the  aisle  watched  us  with 
a  tolerant  interest.  Finally  he  threw  us  a  comment  on 
the  day,  and  we  gathered  that  he,  too,  though  uncon- 
sciously, was  a  little  drunk  on  air.  He  was  enchanted 
with  the  idea  of  climbing  the  Matterhorn,  of  our  doing 
it,  while  he  offered  sage  suggestion.  He  seemed,  at 
that  altitude,  to  think  it  a  mere  question  of  vim  and 
go,  and  as  to  a  guide,  he  scouted  it.  Our  forethought 
and  our  shoes  he  alike  despised,  intimating  that  he 
could  climb  the  Matterhorn  in  his  ecclesiastical  garb. 

"Even,"  Masterman  told  him,  "the  apron  and 
gaiters  of  your  future." 

He  smiled  at  that,  but  insisted  that  the  precursors, 
Tyndall  and  the  rest,  had  robbed  the  adventure  of  ita 
quality  by  their  "ropes  and  things". 

In  a  pause  of  this  descriptive  fluency,  while  he  was 
temporarily  engaged  with  the  bleak  world  beside  the 
track,  I  turned  to  Masterman. 

"I've  been  thinking,"  I  said,  "about  Rose." 

He  nodded. 

"So  have  I,"  said  he,  "all  night.    As  if  she  were 


near." 


An  unaccountable  prescience  came  over  me. 


268  VANISHING  POINTS 

" Ralph,"  I  said,  "if  it  hadn't  been  Hamlin,  it  ought 
to  have  been  you.7' 

He  said  nothing;  but  I  knew  he  could  not  resent  the 
baldness  of  it.  I  saw  how  he  had  cherished  the  idea 
of  her,  not  in  the  least  as  I  had,  as  an  unattainable 
dream,  but  a  present  necessity  of  his  life.  A  height 
always  affected  me  foolishly.  It  made  Masterman 
melancholy  and  silent,  but  it  loosed  my  thoughts  and 
tongue. 

"I'm  out  of  it,"  I  said.  "I'd  do  anything  for  her, 
anything.  But  you're  the  man." 

Still  he  said  nothing,  and  we  came  to  the  land  of 
thin  ah*  and  snow,  and  little  black  pools  and  ominously 
dark  birds  hovering  over  them,  and  there  we  stayed  all 
night,  the  Englishman  with  us,  rather  more  respectful 
of  our  respect  for  mountains,  the  colder  he  grew  and 
the  tighter  the  air  bound  his  feet  with  invisible  chains 
the  night  had  ready.  And  in  the  morning,  overlooking 
that  icy  edge  of  the  world,  we  bade  him  good-by,  and 
with  Max  Stiege,  prince  of  guides,  began  our  climb. 
As  a  feat,  it  was  climbing  made  easy,  after  our  un- 
attended forays  in  the  south.  But  the  Matterhorn 
hadn't  made  it  easy.  You  could  fancy  it  frozen  there 
in  a  rage  at  the  chains  put  upon  it  by  the  dauntlessness 
of  man. 

Not  three  hours  up  that  cruel  inaccessibility,  we  came 
on  a  black  figure  prone  across  a  jag  of  rock,  as  if  he 
had  fallen  and  the  rock  impaled  him.  Stiege  put  his 
great  hands  to  the  man,  and  turned  him  face  upward 
to  the  day,  and  we  got  brandy  into  him.  A  lone  man, 
a  fool  climbing  without  a  guide.  We  swore  over  him 
while  we  used  the  oxygen,  and  when  he  opened  his 


THE  CLUE  269 

eyes  we  swore  again  to  another  note.  For  this  was 
Hamlin.  As  soon  as  he  got  hold  of  himself  he  struck 
our  ministrants  away,  not,  as  I  thought,  from  deliberate 
purpose  to  die,  but  because  the  hostility  of  the  outer 
world  had  crazed  him.  There  was  left  within  him  only 
an  instinct  of  resistance,  a  mad  determination  not  to 
endure  defeat.  But  we  turned  brandy  into  him,  we 
covered  him  with  our  jackets,  and  he  lay  looking  at  us, 
the  agonized  stare  of  the  departing  soul  that  has  much 
to  say,  and  finds,  instead  of  ordered  words,  confusion. 
That  look  of  his  eyes  had  heartbreak  in  it,  too,  from 
a  foolish  reason,  but  a  very  real  one.  They  were  near- 
sighted eyes,  and  without  their  glasses  they  wore  a 
pleading  softness.  Mastermen  bent  over  him.  He, 
with  a  more  direct  cognition  than  mine,  understood 
what  must  be  asked. 

" Where  is  she?" 

The  eyes  seemed  to  make  a  sign,  the  slightest  quiver^ 
of  the  lid  to  the  invisible  safety  below. 

"Zermatt?"  Masterman  prompted. 

The  eyes  said,  "Yes."  Then  Hamlin  seemed  to 
gather  himself  for  the  last  disastrous  leap,  that  wild 
expenditure  of  breath  whereby  he  must  reach  bank-' 
ruptcy  the  sooner. 

"Tell  her— "he  stopped. 

"Tell  her — "  Masterman  repeated. 

"I  don't  understand — about  London.    I  never  did." 

And  then,  as  we  began  the  oxygen  again,  he  died, 
as  if  he  willed  it,  in  the  face  of  science. 

Masterman  could  not  believe  it.  He  was  wild  with  an- 
guish, and  long  after  the  moment  of  hope  was  over,  he 
kept  up  the  fight.  But  Max  Stiege  and  I  knew  it,  and  so 


270  VANISHING  POINTS 

did  Masterman  at  last,  and  that  the  only  thing  to  do  for 
Hamlin  was  to  carry  him  down  to  Zermatt  to  his  waiting 
wife;  and  when  Masterman  admitted  it,  he  gave  a  big 
sob  like  a  woman  and  helped  us  readily.  I  believe  at 
the  instant  Hamlin  seemed  dearer  to  him  than  I,  dearer 
than  Rose,  perhaps — for  whatever  the  mischance  be- 
tween them  the  man  belonged  to  Rose,  and  he  was 
dead. 

When  we  had  made  our  difficult  way  to  the  Corner 
Grat,  there  was  the  Englishman  ready  to  chaff  us  be- 
cause we  had  retreated;  but  finding  what  wreckage 
we  bore,  he  sobered  and  helped  us  greatly.  He  had 
really  lingered  at  the  Corner  Grat  out  of  some  kindli- 
ness for  us,  to  see  how  we  liked  that  needle  of  the 
upper  sleet,  and  now,  with  Stiege,  took  charge  of  our 
miserable  departing. 

"Does  anybody  know  the  man?"  he  asked  Stiege, 
and  we  left  Stiege  to  answer,  "  No."  Then,  in  the  course 
of  our  terrible  preparations,  he  did  see  Hamlin's  face. 
That  was  his  clue,  the  clue  he  didn't  seek,  the  clue 
he  tossed  to  us. 

"My  God!"  he  breathed,  at  first  in  awe,  and  then 
reverently,  as  if  appalled  by  the  ordered  paths  of  life. 
"That's  my  man." 

"What    man?"    Masterman    demanded    savagely. 

At  last  we  were  to  know  Hamlin.  At  the  same  in- 
stant we  were  sure  of  it.  The  Englishman,  in  that  instant, 
could  no  more  help  telling  than  we  could  help  ask- 
ing. 

"It  was  two  years  ago,"  said  he,  "in  London,  near 
the  Strand.  There  was  a  runaway.  This  man  was  there, 
a  lady  with  him.  There  was  the  runaway.  This  man 


THE  CLUE  271 

leaped  aside.  He  pushed  a  woman,  to  get  free.  She 
was  killed,  the  woman.  It  was  over  in  an  instant. 
Nobody  seemed  to  see  how  it  was,  nobody  but 


me." 


"Did  she  see  it?"  Masterman  asked,  steadily.  "His 
wife — the  lady,  I  should  say?" 

"I  don't  know.  I  hope  not.  That  would  have  been 
infernal.  And  I  don't  know  whether  she  was  his  wife. 
She  was  frightened,  for  she  fell,  fainted,  perhaps,  and 
I  saw  her  put  into  a  cab." 

I  saw  Masterman  rejecting  the  clue  as  I  rejected  it. 
Now  we  had  it,  we  didn't  want  the  horrible  thing. 
We  would  have  given  worlds  not  to  have  had  it.  Mas- 
terman laughed  rather  foolishly,  in  the  feint  of  tearing 
up  the  clue. 

"You  wouldn't  know  him  again,"  he  said,  "a  live 
man  in  the  Strand  and  this  dead  man  here." 

The  Englishman  faced  him  down  indignantly. 

"Rather,"  said  he  immovably,  in  the  tone  of  those 
who  have  set  their  empire  beyond  the  seas.  "I'll  tell 
you  how  I  know.  In  the  instant  after  the  woman 
dropped,  this  fellow  reeled  back,  he  shut  his  eyes  for 
one  second  only,  and  he  looked  as  if  he  were  already 
dead.  He  saw  what  he'd  done,  d'ye  see?  He  saw 
what  he'd  done.  And  he  looked  as  he  does  now." 

"We  must  get  rid  of  him,"  I  said  to  Ralph,  on  the 
safe  way  down  to  Zermatt.  "He  mustn't  see  her. 
He's  got  too  keen  an  eye." 

He  nodded.  But  chance  was  good  to  us  there,  for 
our  helpful  Englishman  found  a  telegram  at  the  hotel, 
and  it  hurried  him  away.  I  felt  dazed  with  the  strange- 
ness, the  intention  of  it  all.  Had  we  two  come  up 


272  VANISHING  POINTS 

here  to  the  Matterhorn  because  we  had  desired  the  clue, 
and  that  was  where  the  clue  could  be  given  us?  I 
turned  drunkenly  to  Ralph. 

"I  don't  understand  it,"  I  babbled.   " I  can't." 

"You  mean  you  won't,"  he  said  doggedly.  "It's 
plain  enough." 

"Was  he  a  coward?  Had  she  seen  that — in  the 
Strand?  Was  he  forever  after  trying  to  reinstate  him- 
self with  her?  Did  he  climb  the  Matterhorn  for  that — 
like  a  desperate  fool,  alone,  with  not  even  a  flask  in  his 
pocket,  and  in — 0  my  God! — in  those  shoes?  Do  you 
remember  his  shoes?" 

"Yes,"  said  Masterman,  dryly,  "I  saw  his  shoes." 

And  because  his  voice  sounded  as  if  it  might  break 
and  curse  or  sob,  I  gave  over  baiting  him. 

I  was  the  one  to  tell  Rose  Red.  Masterman  said  I 
was,  and  I  couldn't  dispute  it  for  a  moment.  There 
were  things  to  be  said  that  Masterman  mustn't  say, 
because  his  faith  to  her  must  not  be  violated;  yet  he 
must  hear  them  lest  he  afterward  deny  them  to  her. 
We  went  up  to  her  sitting-room,  and  she  came  forward 
to  meet  us,  dear  Rose  Red,  all  surprise  and  joy  in  us. 
But  she  was  not  happy  even  yet:  more  of  a  woman, 
perhaps,  with  a  wistful  pathos  between  her  brows. 
She  looked  at  us,  first  one  and  then  the  other. 

"What  is  it?  "she  asked. 

Then  I  did  my  big  deed,  the  one  I  am  prouder  of  than 
all  the  quiet  honest  ways  I  have  lived  since. 

"Your  husband — "  said  I. 

"Yes,"  she  prompted. 

"Your  husband  was  on  that  devil  of  a  Matterhorn. 
He  found  a  chap  cast  away  there.  He  gave  him  his 


THE  CLUE  273 

brandy,  gave  him  his  clothes.  The  other  man  came 
down.  Hamlin — 

Her  eyes  shone  with  a  terrible  anguish  of  exultation. 

"He  died,"  she  said. 

"Of  exhaustion,"  I  told  her. 

"Where  is  the  man  he  saved?  I  must  see  him.  I 
must  hear — "  She  was  all  a  passionate  haste. 

It  was  leading  me  further  than  I  had  stopped  to 
consider.  That  is  the  revenge  of  lies.  They  laugh  at 
us  and  take  us  centuries  out  of  our  way;  for  they,  too, 
are  on  the  side  of  God,  and  would  gladly  die  for  him 
and  for  his  worlds.  But  I  couldn't  flinch. 

"The  man  we  lost  in  the  flurry,"  I  told  her.  "He'd 
been  through  too  much.  His  head  wasn't  quite  right, 
either,  nor  Ralph's.  I'm  the  only  one  that  got  the  story 
straight.  Ralph  came  up  later.  He  never  saw  the  man 
at  all.  But  he  was  the  one  to  ease  Hamlin  for  that  few 
minutes  before " 

She  turned  from  one  to  the  other  of  us  in  a  dumb 
inquiry  it  was  terrible  to  see.  Was  there  no  more, 
it  said?  Could  the  man  she  had  loved  slip  away  from 
her  into  everlasting  silence  and  leave  not  the  thinnest 
whisper  on  the  air. 

"There  was  the  message,  Ralph,"  I  said,  roughly. 
My  lie  had  made  a  different  man  of  me.  I  clung  to  it 
doggedly  as  a  criminal  to  a  misbegotten  deed;  but  I  was 
suddenly  furious  with  circumstance  for  having  forced 
me  to  that  ill  companionship. 

"A  message?"  Her  look  of  hunger  wrung  my  heart 
to  bleeding,  and  I  loved  my  lie. 

"'Tell  her/  said  Ralph,  'I  don't  understand — about 
London.  I  never  did.'"  This  he  said  grimly,  as  if 


274  VANISHING  POINTS 

it  saved  his  reason  to  have  something  to  bring  her  that 
was  true.  I  knew  Ralph.  He  hated  and  loved  my  lie 
as  I  did.  But  he  loved  me  for  telling  it. 

Rose,  incredulous  joy  upon  her  face,  thanked  God, 
and  let  her  tears  flow,  and  told  us  God  had  sent  us 
to  Hamlin  and  to  her. 

"We  mustn't  speak  of  this,"  I  assured  her,  fencing 
my  lie  with  all  the  guile  I  had.  "The  man  he  saved — 
when  he  comes  to  himself  he'll  feel  like  a  cur  for  going. 
There'll  be  inquiries — talk — talk.  We  want  to  get 
you  away,  to  the  aunts  down  there.  We'll  say  we  found 
him  dying  of  exhaustion.  You'd  be  willing?  He 
doesn't  need  credit  with  the  world,  if  he's  got  his  credit 
mark  from  you." 

She  put  her  hand  on  my  arm,  partly  in  agreement, 
partly  to  help  her  weakness. 

"It  shall  be — everything  shall  be  as  you  think  best," 
she  said.  "No  matter  whether  anybody  knows  he 
died  gloriously,  if  we  know  it,  we  three " 

"Yes,"  said  Masterman,  and  his  hand  was  on  my 
shoulder.  He  was  comforting  me  for  my  lie,  blessing 
me  for  it,  old  Masterman,  "we  know." 


GOLDEN  BABY 

WE  were  in  the  Sycorax  smoking-room,  within 
an  hour  of  turning  the  lights  out  for  the  night. 
The  air  was  gray  with  smoke,  and  everybody, 
even  the  men  that  made  it,  looked  dulled  by  it.  The 
scion  of  one  of  our  oldest  families,  who  had  seized  the 
occasion  of  an  ocean  voyage  for  extravagant  over- 
indulgence, sat  at  a  little  table,  monotonously  repeat- 
ing, "She  was  the  fairest  of  all  the  country  round/' 
in  a  tone  of  eccentric  rhetorical  emphasis.  Nobody 
took  any  notice  of  him,  because  we  had  ceased  doing 
that  when  he  introduced  us,  one  by  one,  to  the  aura  of 
his  ancestor  who  had  "preceded  Sir  Philip  Sidney  at 
the  battle  of  Zutphen."  What  he  meant  by  that 
initiatory  phrase  we  never  knew.  We  were  merely  con- 
vinced, one  after  another,  by  the  sound  of  it,  that  we 
weren't  strong  enough  to  hear  it  again.  The  man  who 
was  travelling  round  the  globe  on  his  own  private 
fortune  to  discover  a  parasite  for  hostile  bugs  was  ab- 
sorbedly  making  diagrams  of  larvae  and  what  he  called 
winged  coleoptera  for  a  buyer  of  seersucker,  who  was 
not  listening  to  him,  and  the  big  fellow  with  the  grizzled 
beard  and  the  William  Morris  look  of  the  eyes  was 
sunk  in  some  private  reverie  of  his  own.  Suddenly 
the  clerical  young  fellow  opposite  him  asked  him  a 
question,  whereupon  he  leaned  back  in  his  chair,  gripped 

275 


276  VANISHING  POINTS 

the  beer  glass  before  him  as  if  he  might  sling  it,  and 
began,  in  a  voice  like  a  bell: 

"Logic  is  a  fool.  The  mystery  your  calling  is  founded 
on  is  no  more  a  mystery  than  a  million  others.  You 
simply  fail  to  get  the  connections.  I  could  tell  you  a 
dozen  tales  more  unaccountable  than  that,  because 
they're  just  ripped  out  of  the  air  and  made  manifest. 
It's  as  if  you  should  go  out  there  on  deck  and  see  a 
film  of  some  kind  of  impalpable  parchment  hanging 
from  the  topmast.  You'd  send  up  a  man,  he'd  bring  it 
down  to  you,  and  you'd  find  on  it  characters  you  could 
seem  to  read;  but  the  story  they  made  would  say  noth- 
ing whatever  to  you.  I  mean,  it  couldn't  be  hitched 
on  to  the  general  course  of  things.  Now  I'll  give  you  a 
case  in  point." 

He  had  given  us  no  cases  in  point  throughout  the 
voyage.  He  had  simply  rowed  about  labor  and  capital, 
and  said  one  was  as  bad  as  the  other,  capital  being  only 
labor  reversed,  and  we  thought  we  had  discovered  his 
pet  nursling  of  a  fad  and  just  what  road  it  was  leading 
him.  Now  two  or  three  other  men  looked  up,  and  then 
moved  a  little  nearer.  They  scented  story  as  you  do 
when  you  buy  the  new  magazine  and  are  lotting  on 
having  it  to  go  to  bed  on.  The  scion  of  the  noble 
family  leaned  back  in  his  chair,  regarded  us  haughtily, 
and  said,  " What's  all  this?"  in  a  loud  tone  nobody 
noticed  except  discouragingly  because  he  was  making 
more  noise.  We  left  him  to  the  solace  of  it,  and  drew 
up  in  a  circle  about  the  William  Morris  man.  He  had 
put  the  tip  of  his  blunt  finger — the  kind  of  digit  artisans 
work  wonders  with — delicately  into  a  little  pond  of 
beer  on  the  table  and  drawn  out  a  line  from  it  like  a 


GOLDEN  BABY  277 

peninsula.  Then  he  dabbled  his  finger  again  and  put  it 
down  in  another  place,  to  make  an  island,  and  another. 
A  merchant  of  many  sorts  of  goods,  who  sailed  all  seas, 
burst  out  there,  with  a  sudden  recognition: 

"Why,  you're  making  islands !" 

A  white-faced  young  man  of  no  breadth  and  incon- 
siderable stature,  who,  we  understood,  had  some 
reputation  as  a  poet  of  the  minor  variety,  bent  over  the 
table  and  put  on  his  large  horn-bowed  spectacles  to 
look.  He,  too,  spoke  with  an  irrational  quickness,  as 
if  everything  the  William  Morris  man  did  suddenly 
bore  a  meaning.  It  seemed  as  if  the  man  had  turned 
on  his  battery  and  we  had  become  aware  of  his  voltage. 

"Do  you  suppose  that's  how  God  did  it?"  asked  the 
little  poet.  ' '  Before  He  '  came  to  the  making  of  man '  ?  " 

But  the  William  Morris  man  never  answered  him. 
He  did  look  up  at  the  merchant. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "it's  the  West  Indies."  Then 
he  hunched  his  big  frame  back  in  his  chair  and 
began  speaking,  rather  slowly  and  in  a  quiet  voice,  as 
if  what  he  had  to  tell  bore  for  him  a  significance  of  a 
particular  and  really  a  solemn  nature. 

"It  was  a  week  before  Christmas  when  we  sailed. 
Some  company — it  was  a  bum  company  and  went  to 
pieces  afterward  when  its  unseaworthy  boats  had  all 
gone  cranky,  one  way  or  another,  and  the  public  had 
turned  back  to  the  old  standbys  that  rule  the  wave  and 
sap  the  pocket — this  company — I  forget  the  name — 
had  bought  an  old  boat  for  a  song  and  a  promise, 
knocked  out  bulkheads,  furbished  up  some  dog-holes 
for  new  staterooms,  put  in  red  velvet  and  gilding, 
called  her  the  Siren,  and  advertised  a  grand  excursion 


278  VANISHING  POINTS 

to  the  West  Indies.  Somehow  the  idea  took.  It  had 
been  a  nasty  winter,  there  was  easy  money,  and  without 
much  delay  the  Siren's  list  was  full.  I  was  among  the 
first  to  take  passage.  I  was  done  up  that  winter  with 
statistics  and  the  deviltry  of  the  rich  and,  besides,  I'd 
always  wanted  a  sniff  of  sugar,  rum  and  spices  on  their 
own  ground.  When  I  went  on  board  there  was  a  great 
copper  sunset;  it  looked  as  if  it  belonged  to  the  land 
exclusively  and  we  might  never  have  a  whack  at  such 
another  when  we'd  left  New  York  behind  us.  I  turned 
to  look  at  it,  as  I'd  been  turning  all  the  way  along,  and 
I  stood  there  till  the  splendors  and  banners  of  it  blinded 
me.  So  when  I  went  aboard  things  were  dark  before 
me  momentarily,  in  queer  shapes,  the  outlines  of 
warehouses  and  such,  and  I  didn't  feel  that  I'd  really 
seen  anything,  until,  on  the  deck  at  the  end  of  the 
gangplank,  I  came  face  to  face  with  a  coolie  woman, 
the  thinnest  of  her  sort,  with  bare  feet  and  legs,  bare 
arms,  the  slightest  possible  garment,  and  a  weight  of 
silver  bangles  on  her  wrists  and  collars  round  her  neck. 
She  stood  there  holding  a  child,  a  baby  with  a  queer 
expression  of  maturity,  and  her  eyes  as  she  looked  at 
me  were  black  and  solemn.  They  seemed  to  talk  in  a 
language  of  their  own,  to  sing  things  maybe,  chant  'em 
— talking  wasn't  good  enough — and  they  made  me 
shiver.  The  child  sat  there  supported  on  the  crook  of 
her  arm  and  looked  at  me  as  seriously  as  she  did,  but 
with  a  kind  of  well-wishing,  too,  as  if  he  said: 

"'Old  man,  you're  tired,  aren't  you?  Everybody's 
tired.  Glad  you're  shut  of  little  old  New  York  for  a 
spell.  Wish  all  of  'em  could  do  the  same.' 

"What  came  into  my  mind — I  don't  see  why — was 


GOLDEN  BABY  279 

that  he  was  a  kind  of  golden  baby.  Maybe  it  was 
because  he  had  bright  hair — an  image  to  be  worshipped 
—and  my  mind  said  inside,  as  plain  as  your  lips  might 
speak  it,  ' Golden  Baby!7  I  felt  I  liked  him,  too,  better 
than  any  piece  of  littleness  I'd  ever  seen.  And  then, 
in  the  same  minute — for  it  all  passed  as  quickly  as  you 
might  set  your  foot  on  deck  and  lift  the  other  foot  to 
keep  it  company — the  coolie  woman  and  the  golden 
baby  were  gone,  and  there  was  a  spot  of  blackness 
where  he'd  been. 

A  sailor  was  passing  me  with  an  end  of  a  rope. 

'" Where's  the  woman?'  I  asked,  before  I  could  stop 
myself. 

He  gave  me  a  glance,  and  said,  'Sir?'  without 
stopping,  because  he  was  evidently  on  business  of 
the  ship. 

"'The  woman  and  the  child/  I  called  after  him. 

"I  felt  I'd  got  to  know.  But  he  shook  his  head  and 
went  along,  and  I  felt  disappointed,  as  if  I'd  lost  some- 
thing. But  there  was  one  queer  thing.  A  darkness  in 
the  outline  of  the  child  stood  before  my  eyes  until  I'd 
got  into  my  stateroom  and  after.  I  couldn't  rub  it 
away. 

"Well,  gentlemen,  that  voyage  was  a  corker  for 
sheer  madness  of  the  human  creature  let  loose.  We 
hadn't  been  a  day  out  before  I  knew  what  we'd  got 
aboard — mothers  that  regarded  the  boat  as  a  summer 
hotel  and  had  fitted  out  their  daughters  with  every  rag 
known  to  milliners,  to  sell  'em  in  the  market  of  some 
rich  man's  desire.  That  was  the  first — exhibit  A.  Then 
there  were  copper  kings  whose  copper  queens  hadn't 
any  chance  to  show  off  their  diamonds  and  pearls  and 


280  VANISHING  POINTS 

loot  of  the  earth  and  sea  in  the  regulation  manner,  and 
brought  it  all  on  board  to  flout  the  moon  and  stars,  I 
guess,  and  the  Creator  of  the  moon  and  stars,  and  the 
other  folks  He'd  made  that  had  more  or  hadn't  so 
many,  each  in  a  different  way.  It  was  all  money  and 
class  hatred  and  scorn  and  contumely." 

Here  the  scion  of  a  noble  stock  broke  in,  his  dreary 
drone  addressed  to  none  of  us  in  particular: 

"Sir  Philip  Sidney,  let  me  inform  you.  Sir  Philip 
Sidney!  Battle  of  Zutphen!" 

"  That's  it,"  said  the  William  Morris  man,  quietly. 
"That  just  it.  There  were  a  few  of  'em  on  board 
just  like  him.  They'd  had  ancestors  at  Zutphen,  and 
they  wouldn't  speak  to  the  Semitic  walking  diamond- 
shops,  nor  me  because  I  said  I'd  been  in  a  foundry, 
nor  the  captain  even,  because  he  wasn't  a  von.  Inter- 
course was  restricted  because  they  could  only  speak  to 
one  another,  and  they'd  trodden  that  ground  so  long 
that  they  had  only  common  recollections  to  go  on,  and 
I  felt  they  were  the  best  bored  set  on  the  boat.  But  in 
spite  of  all  the  hatreds  and  mildew  of  exclusiveness, 
the  same  old  farce  obtained  that  they  were  all  enjoying 
themselves  immensely.  The  decks  were  canvassed  in 
nearly  every  night  and  the  stars  shut  out,  so  that  those 
apes  of  various  degrees  could  put  on  their  gimcracks 
borrowed  from  the  earth  and  sea,  and  dance  and  strut 
under  the  light  of  electric  bulbs  with  backgrounds  of 
flags  and  paper  garlands.  Great  Israel!  I  wonder  the 
Lord  of  all  don't  turn  His  face  away  from  the  whole 
bloomin'  show  sometimes  and  say,  'I'm  sick  of  vaude- 
ville.' 

"Well,  as  days  went  on,  I  can't  tell  you  how  or  why, 


GOLDEN  BABY  281 

I  began  to  be  conscious  of  hate,  hate  everywhere. 
Whether  it  was  the  heat  and  madness  of  the  tropics 
that  got  into  our  blood  and  set  it  seething,  I  don't 
know,  or  whether  it  was  the  revenge  of  big  nature 
rising  up  against  fool  civilization — we  were  separated 
into  as  many  little  cliques  and  parties  as  the  factions 
in  a  South-American  state.  I  was  out  of  the  whole 
thing,  not  because  I  was  better,  but  because  I  was 
worse.  They  hated  one  another,  and  I  hated  them  all 
with  a  glorious  impartiality.  We'd  gone  due  south, 
struck  Jamaica,  steamed  on  to  the  Isthmus,  and  then 
skirted  the  coast  to  Trinidad  and  dipped  down  beyond 
the  mouth  of  the  Orinoco,  with  the  Southern  Cross 
dominant  now  and  the  Dipper  selling  short.  And 
suddenly  one  night  about  eleven,  when  the  band  was 
whanging  away  at  a  popular  waltz  and  girls  were 
swishing  their  muslins  and  laces  round  the  deck  in 
time,  the  boat  stopped.  You  know  there's  always  an 
underconsciousness  of  danger  at  sea,  in  the  thickest- 
hided.  No  man  forgets  he's  over  an  unplumbed  abyss, 
except  maybe  he's  in  his  cups  and  taking  the  return 
trip  to  Zutphen.  So  when  the  motion — there  wasn't 
much  of  it  on  that  sea — when  it  fell  into  a  calm,  the 
dancing  grigs  stopped,  I  suppose  as  the  dancers  did 
in  '  Belgium's  capital'  when  George  Osborne  got  his 
summons  to  go  and  be  killed,  and  wondered  what  the 
god  of  the  machinery  was  going  to  do  to  them.  We 
stopped,  and  we  stayed  so.  I  was  on  the  hurricane- 
deck,  and  I  came  down  with  that  same  premonition 
of  panic  in  me — I'm  an  old  sailor,  but  I  did  feel  actual 
panic — and  the  first  man  I  met,  making  his  thirty-six- 
inch  strides  along  the  deck,  was  the  second  officer. 


282  VANISHING  POINTS 

He  was  a  good  fellow;  I  hadn't  hated  him.  We'd 
chummed  together  quite  a  lot  on  the  voyage.  I've 
grinned  since  to  think  how  I  greeted  him  inanely. 

"'  We've  stopped,'  said  I. 

"'Yes/  said  he,  two  paces  away  from  me. 

"'What  for?'  I  called,  knowing  I  shouldn't  be  told. 

"'  Don't  know,  sir/  he  returned.  I  knew  he  was 
entrenched  in  official  reserve  and  not  the  accessible 
fellow  I'd  smoked  my  pipe  with. 

"Well,  gentlemen,  we  had  stopped,  and  there  we 
hung  all  that  night,  and  the  next  morning  we  were  there 
still,  a  little  motion  under  us,  the  very  least,  like  the 
sound,  so  far  as  motion  might  be,  of  tiny  ripples  lapping 
on  the  beach.  Everybody  came  haggard  to  breakfast. 
Nobody  had  slept,  except  some  of  the  rummies  who 
were  in  that  condition  of  tissue  where  you  might  call  'em 
permanently  asleep.  The  crew,  such  of  them  as  I 
saw  at  intervals,  seemed  also  to  be  in  a  state  of  ten- 
sion. Then  the  questions  began,  fired  by  the  broad- 
side and  popping  like  guerrilla  warfare,  always  to  the 
same  tune:  What  was  the  matter?  The  answer  re- 
assured us  briefly.  It  was  no  longer,  'We  don't  know.' 
'Some  trouble  with  the  engine/  we  were  assured. 
'The  engineer's  at  it  now.'  So  we  went  on  eating,  and 
fault-finding  when  our  toast  varied  in  brownness,  and 
hating  one  another;  but  the  day,  the  sulky,  burning 
tropical  day,  went  by,  and  the  tropical  night  with  its 
quick  onrush  of  stars,  and  still  we  hadn't  moved. 
That  next  morning  I  met  the  wireless  man  at  the  rail, 
where  he's  gone  to  lean  both  arms  and,  it  seemed, 
throw  some  problem  of  his  own  at  the  bright  horizon- 
line.  He  was  a  little,  round,  oily,  dark  fellow  with 


GOLDEN  BABY  283 

curly  hair,  and  in  spite  of  his  fatness  his  face  looked 
funnily  tragic  with  anxiety,  as  if  he  were  going  to  cry. 
At  once  I  felt  he  was  pretty  well  shaken,  and  he'd  tell 
me  what's  the  matter. 

"'Have  you  tried  wireless?'  I  asked,  in  the  fatuous 
way  we  have  of  baiting  with  a  commonplace  when  we 
mean  to  fish  up  something  that  might  dart  and  elude 
us  unless  it  thought  it  was  snapping  at  the  same  old 
fly.  He  shook  his  head  as  if  he  shook  me  off.  I'd 
thought  he  knew  nothing  but  wireless,  but  it  was 
evident  he  sized  me  up  for  the  ass  I  was. 

"'Tried  it? 'he  said.    'What  else?' 

"'Well,  don't  you  get  anything?' 

He  shook  his  head  again. 

"'Why  don't  you  keep  on  trying?  There  must  be 
stations  down  here — there  must  be  ships — ' 

"'They  don't  answer,'  he  said.  It  was  almost  as 
if  with  another  word  he  might  break  down  actually. 
'I've  changed  my  tune,  and  changed  it — changed  it. 
I  can't  get  them.' 

"He  turned  abruptly  as  if  he  were  really  concealing 
tears  now,  and  ran  up  the  ladder  to  his  post.  Then  I 
went  away  to  think.  I  was  afraid,  sheer  afraid,  and 
wondered  at  myself.  You  see,  I've  no  more  pluck 
than  any  man  of  my  inches,  but  I'd  been  about  a  good 
bit.  I'd  seen  adventure  and  heard  other  fellows  talk 
it  over,  and  I  knew  you're  pretty  sure  to  get  out  of 
everything  with  a  whole  skin  till  that  last  particular 
time  when  you  don't — so  what's  the  use  of  grizzling? 
But  this  time  there  was  panic  in  my  left  waistcoat 
pocket,  neatly  sewed  in  to  stay,  and  I  knew  it  and 
hated  it  for  being  there.  There  was  foul  weather  all 


284  VANISHING  POINTS 

over  the  ship.  Nobody  sang,  nobody  strummed  the 
light  guitar  as  one  girl  had  been  doing  till  we  wished 
she  was  at  home  in  the  kitchen  with  a  consignment  of 
pots  and  pans  to  wash.  New  York  hated  Jerusalem 
more  frankly  than  ever,  and  Jerusalem  wagged  its  fat 
chin  and  openly  put  up  its  beak  at  New  York.  Hate! 
Talk  about  the  wars  of  nations!  If  that  ship  couldn't 
have  made  use  of  a  whole  Hague  conference  all  to 
herself,  it  wasn't  because  she  wasn't  sick  for  it  and  only 
needed  diagnosis  to  have  it  prescribed.  Toward  night 
I  climbed  up  to  the  door  of  the  little  wireless  cage, 
and  stopped  there,  hat  in  hand,  if  you'll  believe  me. 
I  don't  know  what  kind  of  besetment  made  me  feel 
as  if  every  Jack  on  board  that  ship  was  in  as  tight  a 
place  as  he  could  breathe  in,  and  that  every  lubber 
that  spoke  to  them  had  got  to  walk  Spanish.  He 
looked  up  at  me.  His  tired  little  eyes  were  set  in  a 
bed  of  wrinkles.  It  hadn't  been  long,  this  universal 
panic  of  the  ship,  but  it  had  had  time  to  eat  into  him 
and  change  him,  from  a  fat  little  manipulator  who'd 
learned  to  do  a  certain  thing,  to  a  crying,  hungering 
soul  in  trouble,  beseeching — maybe  with  no  voice,  only 
with  those  eyes  and  that  quiver  of  a  mouth — beseech- 
ing the  Lord  of  things  big  and  little  to  lift  him  out 
of  the  pit  he's  stumbled  into.  I  don't  know  whether 
the  wireless  chap  ever  heard  of  the  Psalmist,  but  if  he 
had,  I  bet  he  was  tuning  his  own  little  pipe  to  him  that 
minute. 

"'Go  down/  said  he,  looking  at  me  as  if  I  were  in 
pinafores. 

"That  was  all.  But  I  felt  I  must  speak.  I  had  an 
ass's  desire  to  bray  and  a  meddler's  insane  push  to 


GOLDEN  BABY  285 

help  on  somehow.  I'd  got  to  help  the  ship  on.  We  all 
felt  so.  One  man  in  the  smoking-room — we  kept  it 
all  of  a  cloud  now,  we  smoked  so  hard  and  universally — 
he  told  me  he  felt  as  if  he  must  get  out  and  push,  even 
if  he  drowned  in  doing  it.  He  gave  a  queer  little  catch 
in  his  throat  when  he  said  it.  If  it  had  been  a  woman 
that  gave  that  sound,  you'd  have  said  it  was  a  sob. 
'That's  it/  two  or  three  other  men  had  said,  and  looked 
the  same  way,  and  it  was  ten  to  one  that,  give  them  a 
lead,  they'd  have  sobbed,  too.  It  was  then  I  had  lighted 
out.  I  was  afraid  we  should  all  be  in  hysterics  together 
like  a  girl's  boarding-school.  But  the  wireless  man: 

" 'I  beg  pardon, '  I  said  to  him. 

'"Go  down,'  said  he. 

'"I  beg  your  pardon,'  I  said  again,  'but  mightn't 
there  be — isn't  there — some  sort  of  magnetic  field,  and 
mightn't  we  be  inside  it? ' 

"He  laughed  a  little — a  shrill  hoot  all  scorn  and 
tiredness. 

" 'Magnetic  grandmother!'    said  he.    'Go  down.' 

"Then  I  went. 

"Well,  whatever  it  was  that  stopped  stayed  stopped. 
Life  hung  fire.  Electricity  hadn't  played  us  false. 
There  were  plenty  of  lights,  as  faithful  as  the  night. 
It  wasn't  true  that  according  to  the  old  tune — it  ran 
in  my  head  all  the  time  then — 'water  wouldn't  quench 
fire,  fire  wouldn't  burn  axe/  and  the  rest  of  it.  Fire 
was  faithful  and  cooked  us  three — no,  by  George! 
six  times  a  day  the  most  elaborate  and  embroidered 
and  sinful  meals  for  richness  the  tropics  ever  saw. 
But  we  simply  didn't  move,  and  now  the  mischief  was 
so  patent,  the  whole  thing  grew  so  upsetting  and  queer, 


286  VANISHING  POINTS 

that  the  usual  disciplinary  silence  cracked  and  broke. 
The  captain  made  no  secret  of  it.  The  mate  made  none, 
nor  the  chief  engineer.  He,  I  found  out,  was  spending 
his  time  digging  into  his  engine,  prying  into  her  heart 
to  find  out  whether  she'd  got  some  deadly  secret  he 
hadn't  shared.  At  last  he  was  crying  over  her,  the  chief 
electrician  told  me  afterward.  But  they  made  no  secret, 
any  of  them.  There  was  nothing  the  matter  anywhere. 
The  engine  simply  would  not  go.  And  we  saw  no  ship 
and  we  saw  no  land,  and  wireless  wouldn't  talk.  The 
only  creatures  on  the  ship  that  showed  any  animation 
because  they  hadn't  time  to  break,  were  the  stewards 
and  I  suppose  the  chef,  though  I  never  saw  him,  and 
the  band.  For  according  to  the  notion  that  you  can 
ensure  a  man  against  panic  by  making  a  noise  or  stuffing 
him,  they  kept  the  band  playing  the  last  comic-opera 
airs,  and  the  stewards  brought  on  more  food,  food, 
food,  and  offered  it  up  to  the  god  that's  in  every  man's 
belly.  I'll  say  right  here  that  I  never  knew  stewards 
so  overworked  as  those  poor  devils  had  been  from  the 
start,  and  by  now  they  were  so  pasty-pale  it  made  you 
ashamed  of  yourself,  if  you  were  an  able-bodied  man, 
to  ring  a  bell  and  see  'em  totter  out  and  start  into  that 
perfunctory  sprightliness — you  know  it.  See  it  here 
on  this  very  ship;  but  these  boys  look  better,  a  heap 
better.  The  stewards  on  the  Siren  made  you  want  to 
say,  'For  God's  sake,  give  me  the  key  of  the  pantry 
and  I'll  get  it  myself.' 

"Well,  one  night,  as  if  a  great  bubble  burst  in  the 
air,  something  happened.  Don't  you  know  how  it 
feels  when  your  head's  sort  of  muffled  and  woozy,  and 
suddenly  something  clicks  in  your  ear,  and  everything 


GOLDEN  BABY  287 

clears  and  lightens,  and  you  find  yourself  out  in  the 
open?  This  was  exactly  that  way.  We  were  all  on 
deck,  packed  into  our  rows  of  steamer  chairs — I  believe 
we  were  afraid  of  going  below,  and  besides  it  was  hot — 
and  the  band  was  dashing  along  from: 

'"Oh,  I  am  the  King  of  Gold, 
And  I  made  it  all  myself; 
My  heart  and  brain  I  sold 
In  accumulating  pelf/ 

to  the  Sylvia  ballet  music,  when  a  man  down  the  line 
of  chairs  somewhere — I  never  knew  who  he  was — burst 
out  into  a  kind  of  screech:  'Stop  that  band!  For  God's 
sake,  stop  that  band!' 

"We  didn't  have  to.  The  band  stopped.  I  believe 
it  knew,  instruments  and  all,  that  we  had  had  every 
hair's  weight  we  could  endure,  and  that  it  had  blared 
out  all  the  breath  it  could  spare,  and  had  got  either 
to  scream  or  die  dead  from  tiredness  and  fear.  And 
then  I  turned  my  head  a  little — I  don't  know  why: 
I  felt  as  if  I  had  been  called — and  in  a  veil  of  darkness 
by  the  rail  pretty  well  aft  I  saw  them,  the  coolie  woman 
and  the  baby.  'Golden  Baby!'  I  caught  myself  saying, 
under  my  breath,  'Golden  Baby!' 

"And  at  once  my  fear  passed  away  from  me  as  the 
shadow  passes  when  the  cloud  moves  on.  Something 
snapped — that  same  lightening  like  a  bubble's  breaking 
— and  something  came  up  in  me  that  was  like  summer 
mornings  and  being  young.  I  felt  it  going  all  over  the 
ship,  as  if  there'd  been  long  breaths — what  the  stories 
call  breaths  of  relief — and  I  knew  I  was  in  the  midst 


288  VANISHING  POINTS 

of  a  flood  of  the  same  kind  of  sudden  happiness.  I  had 
time  to  ask  myself  why,  why,  and  to  wonder  a  little, 
because  the  ship  hadn't  started  and  we  were  in  exactly 
as  bad  case  as  before.  But  that  I  couldn't  stop  to  think 
of,  for  my  eyes  were  on  the  Golden  Baby,  and  I  seemed 
to  be  wanting  to  learn  everything  I  could  about  him  by 
heart,  for  fear  I  should  never  see  him  again.  You 
know  some  minutes  warn  you  they're  going  to  be  mighty 
short  and  you'd  better  take  a  snapshot  of  'em  while 
you  can.  The  coolie  woman  stood  there  exactly  as  she'd 
stood  on  deck  the  first  minute  I  saw  her.  She  had  on 
the  same  scanty,  dignified  garment  down  to  her  bare 
knees  and  thin  legs,  and  the  silver  round  her  neck  and 
on  her  arms  shone  out  there  in  the  dark.  It  seemed  to 
shine  like  moonlight.  The  electric  lights  didn't  touch 
her  or  the  child.  They  were  there  in  a  darkness  of  their 
own,  and  it  seemed  as  if  they  made  their  own  light.  The 
child  sat  on  her  arm  and  looked  toward  us  and  smiled. 
His  hair  was  bright.  His  face  was  bright.  After- 
ward I  had  a  kind  of  feeling  that  he  stretched  out  his 
arms  toward  us,  but  that  I  couldn't  swear  to.  His 
smile  was  queer,  too.  Or,  no,  it  wasn't  queer.  It 
was  pretty  much  what  you'd  see  in  any  baby,  only  more 
so.  It  wasn't — well,  it  wasn't  benignant,  you  know; 
spiritual,  you  might  call  it,  same  as  it  is  in  pictures 
of — "  He  hesitated  here,  being,  we  thought,  diffident 
about  matters  of  accepted  religion. 

" Madonnas,"  said  the  little  poet,  raptly.  He  had 
hung  on  every  word. 

"  Exactly,  Madonnas.  No,  it  was  the  way  you'd 
like  to  have  your  own  baby  look,  if  he'd  come  in  from 
play  with  his  hands  full  of  flowers.  But  the  coolie 


GOLDEN  BABY  289 

woman  smiled.  She  held  out  her  arms  toward  us,  and 
him  in  them.  And  all  along  the  line  I  knew  women 
were  holding  out  their  arms  toward  the  child;  and 
the  men — well,  I  guess  they  did  what  I  did.  I  brought 
my  feet  down  to  the  deck  and  sat  up  straight  and  bent 
forward.  That's  all  the  way  I  know  how  to  express 
it.  I  wanted  to  get  there,  somewhere  near  the  baby, 
and  same  time  I  knew  I  mustn't  go  any  nearer,  not  a 
step.  And  the  only  relief  I  had  was  muttering,  just 
as  you'd  breathe  hard,  ' Golden  Baby!'  Then  the 
woman  spoke.  It  was  a  kind  of  voice — well,  I  don't 
know  exactly,  a  cool  voice,  smooth,  kind  of  like  a 
silver  horn.  Something  shaking  in  it,  too,  something 
that  trembled  and  yet  had  a  power  of  its  own,  a  vibra- 
tion— I've  never  been  able  to  describe  it  to  myself, 
all  the  tunes  I've  tried,  and  I'm  not  having  any  better 
luck  now.  But  there  wasn't  any  mistake  about  what 
she  said.  'You're  keeping  him  back,  and  he's  got  to  be 
there.  Oh,  don't !  You  mustn't  keep  him  back. ' ' 

"What  language  did  she  speak  in?"  asked  the  man 
that  sought  the  parasites.  He'd  been  listening  very 
seriously,  not  in  any  spirit  of  unbelief,  I  could  see,  but 
with  the  gravity  due  a  marvel. 

The  William  Morris  man  nodded  at  him. 

"I  knew  that  would  come,"  he  said.  "It  came  that 
very  night,  before  we  turned  in.  'What  language  did 
she  speak? '  says  the  wireless  man  to  me,  and  I  carried 
the  question  on  to  the  first  mate.  'God,  man,  I  don't 
know,'  says  he.  'She  spoke,  that's  all  I  can  say.' 

"And  a  Frenchman  that  was  going  to  write  up 
Martinique  as  he  saw  it  from  the  deck  swore  she  spoke 
in  French,  and  the  German  that  played  the  trombone 


290  VANISHING  POINTS 

said  it  was  the  best  Hanoverian  German.  I  knew  well 
enough  it  wasn't  either,  but  I  didn't  know  what  it  was, 
and  I  didn't  care.  I  only  know  she  spoke  and  we 
understood.  I  didn't  have  much  eyesight  to  spare 
from  looking  at  the  baby;  but  somehow  I  did  realize 
that  everything  round  me  was  different,  and  different 
all  over  the  ship.  Mrs. — I  forget  her  condemned  and 
sacred  name — she  was  one  of  your  Boston  Apocalypse 
people,  the  kind  that  got  transfigured  on  some  mount 
or  other  and  haven't  spoken  to  anybody  since — why, 
up  to  now  she  hadn't  accepted  anybody's  being  on  that 
boat  but  herself  and  her  two  long-footed  daughters 
and  their  following.  And  now  she  sat  there  with  her 
hand  on  a  bedizened  Jewess's  fat  knee,  and  her  daugh- 
ters had  hold  of  a  school-teacher  from  the  West — not 
with  a  ten-foot  pole  and  a  hook  on  the  end  of  it,  mind 
you,  but  as  if  they  were  constrained  to  hug  somebody 
and  it  didn't  matter  whom.  It  was  the  same  all  over 
the  ship.  Something  had  lubricated  us.  Something 
had  washed  us  clean.  I  understood,  and  at  the  same 
minute  I  knew  they  all  understood,  too.  Hate  had 
passed  away,  and  in  its  place  was  the  other  word  that's 
just  as  big.  ' Golden  Baby!'  I  says  to  myself.  I  saw 
he  had  done  it,  though  I  didn't  know  how.  That  didn't 
concern  us  somehow. 

"The  coolie  woman  seemed  to  come  forward.  I  say 
seemed,  though  she  didn't  move  a  step,  but  we  all 
knew  she  was  nearer,  every  one  of  us,  and  that  it 
wasn't  important  except  as  she  brought  the  child. 
Anyhow,  he  seemed  nearer,  and  if  everybody  felt  as 
I  did  it  was  as  if  the  child  was  warm  and  bright  right 
in  the  midst  of  us.  She  spoke  again. 


GOLDEN  BABY  291 

'" That's  it/  she  said.  'That's  good.  When  you 
feel  like  this  it  doesn't  keep  him  back.  Don't  keep 
him  back.  He's  needed  so/ 

"And  then  something  happened.  It  was  so  gradual 
and  so  natural  that  at  first  we  didn't  realize  what  it  was, 
only  that  everything  in  general  was  all  right,  and  the 
sun  would  rise  to-morrow  on  the  good  old  practical 
world  with  no  fear  in  it,  and  God  was  up  there  in  His 
heavens  wishing  us  well  and  not  playing  tricks  on  us. 
The  ship  was  moving,  that's  what  it  was.  There  was 
the  beat  of  the  engine  and  the  little  heaving  motion 
of  a  ship  that  begins  to  feel  herself,  though  on  smooth 
water.  Then  somebody  began  to  cry  and  somebody 
else  laughed,  and  we  hugged  each  other,  I  guess,  nobody 
particularly  anxious  to  know  whether  he  was  hugging 
out  of  his  class  or  not,  and  somehow  or  other  the 
coolie  woman  and  the  Golden  Baby  were  gone.  But 
that  night  it  seemed  no  more  incredible  to  have  them 
go  than  it  did  to  have  them  come.  And  the  engine 
was  beating  and  the  wireless  man  suddenly  appeared 
among  us,  his  flabby  round  face  all  puffed  out  again 
with  satisfaction  in  his  box  of  tricks,  and  he  says : 
'  There's  a  revolution  in  Haiti!' 

"And  we  laughed  louder  and  more  foolishly,  not 
because  there  was  a  revolution,  but  because  it  was 
such  a  joyful  thing  to  have  wireless  say  anything  at  all. 

"' Let's  have  something  to  eat/  says  somebody 
then,  because  we'd  got  used  to  eating  as  a  kind  of 
expression  of  emotion  of  any  sort;  but  somebody  else 
roared  out:  'Let  the  stewards  rest,  can't  you?  Poor 
devils!' 

"'Poor  devils!'   said  somebody   else,   and  then  I 


292  VANISHING  POINTS 

understood,  and  I  guess  everybody  else  did,  that  we 
not  only  impossibly  loved  one  another,  but  we  loved 
the  pasty  stewards,  too. 

"And  we  bunked  down  quietly  that  night,  and  there 
was  no  eating  or  drinking,  only  a  kind  of  prayerful 
yearning  over  the  engine  that  kept  beating  on,  and 
thoughts  we  didn't  dare  to  put  into  words  about  the 
Baby.  And  next  day  the  engines  were  still  going,  and 
there  was  a  breeze,  and  in  some  queer  way  we  were  a 
quiet,  happy  crew  of  people.  And  everybody  spoke  to 
everybody  else." 

"Where  were  the  woman  and  the  baby?"  asked  the 
parasite  man.  He  was  frowning  a  good  deal  and  beating 
a  forefinger  silently  on  the  table. 

"I  don't  know." 

"Don't  know?  Didn't  you  ask  for  them?" 

"No." 

"Didn't  anybody?" 

"No." 

"Why  didn't  you  ask?" 

The  William  Morris  man  paused  a  long  time  here, 
and  seemed  to  study  the  question  in  many  aspects. 
Then  he  answered  slowly: 

"We  knew  we  were  not  to  ask.  We  knew  they'd 
come  for  a  special  purpose.  What  it  was  didn't  concern 
us,  and  we  felt — we  felt  a  loyalty  to  the  child,  a  loyalty 
bigger  than  anything  I'd  ever  felt  before.  I  guess  it 
was  so  with  all  of  'em." 

"Did  you  ever  see  them  again?" 

"Oh,  yes.  We  sailed  north,  touching  at  an  island 
now  and  then,  contented  as  you  please,  but  solemn, 
changed  in  a  way.  I  was  changed.  I  guess  they  all 


GOLDEN  BABY  293 

were.  I  haven't  been  the  same  man  since.  It  was  the 
pasty  stewards  on  that  trip  that  set  me  thinking  labor 
and  capital  wasn't  an  institution  to  be  sworn  over. 
There  was  something  to  be  done  about  it.  Well,  we 
kept  our  course  north,  and  then  we  slid  along  the  coast 
of  Haiti,  and  the  wireless  man  picked  up  more  about 
the  revolution.  Hot  as  pepper  it  was,  black  as  ink. 
And  then  one  night  off  that  coast — I  never  knew 
whether  there  was  a  harbor  or  not — the  engines  slowed 
down  and  we  stopped.  But  queer  as  it  was  to  stop  again 
we  didn't  feel  a  breath  of  our  old  panic,  only  a  solemn 
expectation.  And  we  heard  a  stroke  of  oars,  and  before 
I  knew  what  was  doing  there  was  the  coolie  woman, 
Golden  Baby  in  her  arms,  going  over  the  side.  They 
seemed  to  make  their  own  light — the  child  did.  His 
hair  was  bright  almost  like  flame.  His  face — I  never 
saw — " 

Here  he  stopped  a  moment,  as  if  the  memory  were 
too  blinding  to  be  borne. 

"  I  heard  a  woman  say — it  wasn't  as  if  she  was  afraid, 
but  only  awed  and  wondering — l  Don't  let  them  go 
there  into  that  island  in  the  dark.  Don't  let  them  go ! ' 
And  somebody  else  said: 

"'Hush!' 

"I  jumped  to  the  rail  and  looked  over,  and  I  got  a 
glimpse — I  swear  I  did — of  a  boat  full  of  blacks  and 
the  stern  seat  vacant  for  a  passenger.  And  the  boat 
moved  away,  and  there  was  a  light  in  it  there  hadn't 
been  before.  It  was  bright,  like  the  baby's  hair.  We 
put  on  steam  again,  and  that  was  all." 

Nobody  spoke  for  a  while,  and  the  steward,  perking 
out  the  curtains  at  the  port-holes,  to  give  himself 


294  VANISHING  POINTS 

pretence  for  lingering  while  our  talk  shut  down,  ven- 
tured to  look  at  us  imploringly,  like  a  tired  clock  strik- 
ing the  hour.  The  parasite  man  began  to  feel  his  way 
cautiously  through  a  sentence,  evidently  not  knowing 
where  he  was  to  come  out. 

"It's  your  theory,  is  it,  that — that  the  spirit  of  those 
on  board  ship  delayed — well,  it's  absurd  to  say  it — 
stopped  the  machinery?" 

The  William  Morris  man  nodded. 

"When  you  put  in  that  way/'  he  owned,  "of  course 
there's  nothing  for  it  but  to  laugh.  But  there  were  evil 
passions  aboard  that  ship,  envy,  pride,  covetousness, 
lust,  hate — chiefly  hate.  Now  if  you  should  ask  me 
if  hate  could  stop  an  engine,  I  should  say,  'No,  it  can't,' 
and  so  would  you.  Still,  the  hate  was  there  and  the 
engine  stopped." 

"Ah!"  This  was  a  breath  in  unison  from  us  all, 
not  a  breath  of  understanding,  but  of  concurrence. 
The  scion  of  a  noble  stock,  who'd  been  cooling  off  a  little, 
got  on  his  wobbly  pins  and  stretched  himself  cautiously, 
with  regard  to  equipoise. 

"Look  here,  old  chap,"  said  he,  "I've  heard  that 
story  before." 

The  William  Morris  man  was  too  much  absorbed 
in  the  after-tang  of  his  renewed  memory  of  it  to  notice 
who  spoke,  or  he  wouldn't  have  answered.  Nobody 
answered  the  Sidney  man. 

"Not  likely,"  said  he.  He  spoke  briefly,  absently. 
"None  of  us  who  were  there  were  likely  to  tell  it.  I 
never  told  it  before  in  my  life." 

"But  I've  heard  it,"  said  the  little  poet. 

"Have  you?'"   asked    the   William    Morris  man. 


GOLDEN  BABY  295 

He  looked  up  at  him  and  spoke  as  if  in  that  quarter 
something  might  be  doing.  "Have  you?" 

"Yes,"  said  the  little  poet.  His  eyes  shone.  His 
hair  seemed  to  bristle  and  come  alive  with  some  new 
excitement  under  his  poll.  "Oh  yes,  I've  heard  it." 

"When  d'  you  hear  it?" 

"Long  ago — oh,  long  ago!" 

"Who  told  you?"    . 

"A  man  named  Coleridge.  He  called  it l The  Ancient 
Mariner7". 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE 

WE  were  at  Darjheeling,  Harry  Chiltern  and  I, 
he  doing  some  heavy  sentimentalizing  because 
that  was  indicated  by  the  social  atmosphere, 
and  fancying  he  was  about  to  rake  in  an  occasional  order 
for  a  portrait,  and  I,  as  a  newspaper  man  temporarily 
retired,  snuffing  round  for  material.  I  had  a  theory 
that  some  of  these  too  civilized  and  much  worn  quarters 
of  the  globe  were  not  explored  to  exhaustion  by  the 
fellows  who  had  already  made  their  bold  rubricated 
mark,  and  I  thought  there  might  even  be  a  pocket  or 
two  at  Darjheeling  where  a  cleverish  penman  could 
strike  it  rich.  Besides,  I  wanted  to  write  an  article  on 
Kipling's  India,  and  I  never  can  ogle  any  place  to 
advantage  if  I  just  go  out  with  my  hands  in  my  pock- 
ets and  saunter  over  it.  I  need  to  have  an  ostensi- 
ble purpose,  like  the  ladies  who  can't  walk  a  brisk  mile 
without  a  hank  of  embroidery  cotton  at  the  end  of  it, 
and  then  they  can  foot  it  all  day. 

We  were  a  little  bored  at  last,  Chiltern  and  I,  he  with 
the  discovery  that  Mrs.  Hauksbee  is  no  better  than  her 
type  (and  the  type  is  common  enough,  none  older), 
once  the  gilding  wears  off,  and  I  discerning  that  I 
wasn't  squeezing  very  much  juice  out  of  an  orange 
that  had  been  punctured  before,  when  Florence  De 
Lisle  came  up  from  Calcutta  with  her  most  respectable 
uncle  and  aunt,  and  the  very  best  of  introductions  to 

296 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  297 

the  reigning  dames.  Florence  De  Lisle  wasn't  her  name. 
It  was  a  New  England  name  that  has  considered  itself 
sacred  for  a  long  time,  as  measured  by  New  England, 
and  wouldn't  have  allowed  Krishna  or  a  drove  of 
sacred  cows  to  take  precedence  of  it.  But  we  soon  had 
no  use  for  her  name,  because  we  at  once  christened  her, 
at  a  mess  dinner,  where  she  was  mentioned  with  re- 
spectful anticipation,  the  Mouse,  and  the  Mouse  she 
continued  to  be  among  the  entirely  idolizing  circle 
where,  in  the  teeth  of  Mrs.  Hauksbee,  she  took  up 
an  innocent  reign.  She  was  very  beautiful,  slender  as  a 
wand,  with  a  hand  like  a  lily,  a  pale  face  inside  the 
particular  oval  that  makes  you  think  of  unattainable 
things,  the  pointed  chin  of  a  Reynolds  angel,  great 
brown  eyes,  and  coils  of  the  palest  fine  blonde  hair. 
It  was  by  chance  that  any  of  us  knew  the  color  of  her 
eyes.  We  weren't  allowed  to  see  them,  for  she  had,  for 
purposes  of  mysterious  concealment,  full  white  lids,  the 
kind  Raphael  set  the  fashion  of,  and  a  set  of  eyelashes 
long  enough  to  fringe  a  cloak.  There  got  to  be  bets,  at 
last,  as  to  the  actual  color  of  her  eyes,  and  the  number 
of  times  a  fellow  could  wile  them  out  of  covert.  She 
wasn't  using  them  for  their  legitimate  purpose  of  hiding 
and  seeking.  She  looked  just  innocence,  plain  inno- 
cence and  shyness,  as  if  she  actually  hadn't  the  grit  to 
meet  a  world  as  coarse  and  head-strong  as  she'd  found 
everything  beyond  the  shrine  of  her  white  arms.  As 
soon  as  we  saw  her  we  knew  she  was  the  Mouse,  though 
some  drivelled  awhile,  after  St.  Bottle  had  passed,  about 
moonbeams  and  angels;  and  we  set  about  wondering 
what,  beyond  maiden  meditation,  had  so  suppressed 
her.  In  spite  of  her  slenderness,  she  looked  athletic,  a 


298  VANISHING  POINTS 

girl  who  had  some  go  in  her  and,  to  me,  the  once  or 
twice  when  I  dashed  into  the  bower  of  her  shaded 
eyes,  perhaps  unrecognized,  untamed  desires.  Some- 
thing had  subdued  her,  something  kept  her  veiled. 

"I  know,"  said  Chiltern  one  night  after  he  had 
danced  with  her  twice  and  been  ready  to  square  off 
at  the  rest  of  us  for  a  third,  until  her  uncle  came  up  with 
reinforcements  of  orders  from  the  aunt  (called  ir- 
reverently and  universally  "Bellona"),  and  took  her 
away,  "it's  that  kangaroo  of  an  uncle.  It's  that  am- 
bling pad  of  an  aunt." 

Now  no  terms  could  have  been  less  accurately  se- 
lected. The  uncle  and  aunt  were  simply  two  very 
large,  slow-moving  persons,  bounded  on  the  north, 
east,  south  and  west  by  prejudice  of  various  colors. 
They  were  rather  terrible,  on  the  score  of  insularity, 
but  they  looked  in  no  sense  like  tyrants. 

"Oh,  rot!"  said  I.  The  Indian  night  was  irritating 
to  me  with  its  little  circle  of  safety  where  we  sat  and 
cooled  ourselves,  and  the  jungles  of  manifold  sorts 
beyond,  jungles  of  hatred  and  tyranny  and  caprice, 
and  a  losing  game  where  good  Englishmen  think  they're 
dying  for  civilization,  and  are  really  the  goods  delivered 
to  serve  imperial  greed.  I  was  tired  of  it  all.  "Do  you 
think  they  abuse  her?  Is  that  your  idea?  " 

"I  think  they've  built  a  little  fence  of  privilege  round 
her,  and  nobody's  coming  in  unless  he's  got  the  mun." 

"Well,"  said  I,  hatefully,  "you  haven't  got  it,  Chilly, 
my  boy.  So  don't  do  any  more  fluttering  round  the 
candle  than  you  feel  actually  obliged  to.  It's  hot,  and 
— oh,  what's  the  use!" 

Chiltern  got  up  and  plunged  across  the  room  and 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  299 

made  himself  hotter.  I  had  the  sense  to  keep  still, 
and  felt  superior  to  him. 

"It  isn't  all  money/'  he  growled  out.  "They're 
prospecting  for  family  trees." 

I  was  yawning  my  head  off. 

"I  guess  it's  money  fast  enough,"  I  said.  "Don't 
get  Fitch  up  here,  that's  all  I  say.  And  if  he  comes, 
don't  tell  me  I  haven't  warned  you." 

"Fitch!"  scoffed  Chiltern.  "Fitch!"  And  that 
was  all  he  would  say  until  two  days  afterward  when 
Fitch  actually  came. 

Now  Fitch  was  a  large,  middle-aged  bachelor  of 
American  birth,  who  wore  a  watch-chain  draped  in 
twin  festoons  across  his  semi-circular  front,  and  looked, 
at  every  point,  as  though,  if  you  should  cut  into  him, 
you'd  find  cold  suet.  He  was,  I  think,  the  most  pestif- 
erous bore,  the  most  ponderous,  untrammelled  bore, 
that  ever  took  it  upon  himself,  in  a  massive  way,  to 
disgrace  his  country  abroad.  And  he  was  incredibly 
rich.  Chiltern  had  painted  his  portrait,  turned  him 
out  a  pompous  ass  in  a  style  that  seemed  to  please 
Fitch  very  well,  and  Fitch  had  rewarded  him  for  it, 
and  me  because  I  happened  to  be  chumming  with 
Chiltern,  by  pursuing  us,  in  a  pathetic  way  (if  you  had 
any  human  feeling  for  such  a  semblance  of  life  as  he 
was),  eating  with  us,  drinking  all  round  us,  densely 
trying  to  make  it  worth  our  while  by  offering  us  a  more 
luxurious  line  of  travel  than  we  could  afford  ourselves, 
or  accept  from  any  man,  and  most  misguidedly  gobbling 
up  our  jokes  and  laughing  in  the  wrong  key.  We  had 
escaped  him  at  Calcutta,  told  him  we  were  going  to 
Benares,  and  fled,  hot-foot,  remis  velisque,  for  Darj- 


300  VANISHING  POINTS 

heeling.  But  we  were  never  without  a  shudder  at  his 
approaching  aura,  and  two  days  after  we  had  evoked 
him  by  meddling  with  his  name,  he  appeared  like  a 
fattened  ghost  at  our  sides — literally  that,  because  he 
stepped  in  between  us  as  we  were  entering  the  club. 

"I  began  to  have  an  idea  you  fellows  were  here," 
said  he.  "Been  everywhere  for  you.  Come  along  in 
and  have  tiffin  with  me." 

We  didn't  want  his  precious  tiffin;  but  seeing  him 
there,  we  did  find  it  necessary  to  talk  to  him.  Chiltern 
began.  He  told  him  Darjheeling  was  infested  with 
snakes  and  suttee.  The  suttees  were  being  shot  by  the 
dozen  with  nine-inch  maharajahs,  and  no  man  was  safe. 
There  was  more  to  the  same  end,  and  Fitch  stood  and 
gazed  at  him  out  of  his  little  pale  eyes,  and  at  the  end 
remarked : 

" Actually!     When  are  you  fellows  going  down?"( 

Chiltern  told  him  gloomily  that  we  meant  to  stay' 
and  die  on  the  spot,  because  we  were  poor  men  and 
Darjheeling  offered  a  field  for  our  professional  abilities; ; 
but  he  shouldn't  advise  any  valued  citizen  with  a 
bank  account  to  do  anything  so  absolutely  suicidal  and 
deadly.     Fitch  listened  to  him,  with  the  unwinking 
stare  that,  as  I  always  felt,  meant  an  effort  to  under- 
stand which  would,  if  measured  in  static  units,  have 
been  sufficient  to  blow  St.  Peter's  into  the  air  and  waft 
it  over  the  Nile,  and  he  said : 

"Well,  I  guess  I'm  safe  so  long  as  you  fellows  are  here. 
You  know  the  ropes  pretty  well.  When  you  think  it's 
time  to  cut  I'll  go  with  you." 

Chiltern  groaned. 

"Got  a  stitch?"  old  Proser  asked  him  sympathet- 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  301 

ically.  "I've  had  a  twinge  or  two  myself,  spite  of  the 
devilish  heat." 

"No,"  Chiltern  told  him,  it  wasn't  rheumatism. 
It  was  snake-bite  or  a  forerunner  of  cholera,  he  didn't 
know  which.  He  thought  he'd  go  back  to  the  hotel  and 
turn  in.  But  just  as  he  was  getting  off,  and  Fitch  was 
handing  him  an  affectionate  good-by,  Fitch  happened 
to  say,  quite  by  chance  it  was : 

"  I  see  there  are  some  folks  here  I  know.  I'll  look  'em 
up,  I  guess — the  De  Lisles." 

"The  De  Lisles!"  Chiltern  turned  into  a  statue  and 
glared  at  him,  open-mouthed,  and  I  felt  I  was  glaring, 
too.  We  were  humble  with  curiosity. 

"Oh,  yes,"  Fitch  said.  De  Lisle  and  he  were  old 
acquaintances.  Started  in  the  cotton-mill  together, 
and  had  a  good  many  dealings,  keeping  prices  on  a 
level  and  hedging  on  strikes.  Then  he  gave  us  his 
benignant,  flat  smile,  like  the  dramatic  effort  of  a 
garnished  ham,  and  pottered  away  with  that  walk  of 
his,  as  if  both  his  feet  were  tender.  Chiltern  looked  at 
me  and  I  at  him. 

"Well,"  I  said,  "cheer  up.  He  knows  the  Mouse 
already.  He  won't  marry  her,  for  if  he  was  going  fco  he 
could  have  done  it  before." 

"Marry  her!"  hooted  Chiltern.  "He?  Marry 
that- 

" Mouse,"  said  I. 

But  the  next  day  it  looked  as  if  nobody  were  going 
to  marry  the  Mouse  if  Bellona  and  Bellona's  bride- 
groom, as  we  quite  seriously  called  them,  could  pre- 
vent it — nobody  but  one :  for  William  Norman  Pilking- 
ton  Hare  had  arrived,  an  Englishman  of  long  descent, 


302  VANISHING  POINTS 

with  manners,  money,  everything  in  his  pocket,  six- 
foot  two,  military  carriage,  fine  blonde  head,  and  a 
hand  and  foot  to  charm,  and  we  saw,  actually  saw 
Bellona  draw  bead  on  him.  It  was  at  one  of  those 
foolish  afternoon  teas  where  the  six  young  ladies  then  in 
Darj  heeling  who  hunted  in  half-dozens,  were  displayed 
for  sale,  suitably  chaperoned,  and  the  mother  of  one  of 
them  came  in  towing  young  Hare,  doubtless  for  home 
consumption.  He  took  his  cup  of  tea  like  a  man, 
gazed  all  round  with  his  clear  blue  eyes,  and  saw  the 
Mouse.  She  wasn't  one  of  the  six,  but  her  precious 
uncle  and  aunt  contrived  to  have  her  look,  as  they 
always  did,  some  way  or  other,  as  if  she  were  sitting  in  a 
special  coronation  chair  and  as  if  her  muslin  dress  had 
been  made  out  of  something  mystic,  wonderful.  Hare's 
eyes  dwelt  on  her  for  an  instant,  as  the  novels  have  it, 
and  then  he  found  Bellona  at  his  elbow,  saying  in  that 
cultivated  patois  of  hers,  half  middle-class  English, 
half  Bostonese,  that  she'd  met  his  aunt,  Lady  Sample- 
ton,  and  how  did  Lady  Sampleton  do?  Hare  answered 
civilly,  though  without  showing  any  warmth — as, 
indeed,  how  could  he,  for  Chiltern,  who  had  painted 
Lady  Sampleton's  portrait,  said  afterward  she  looked 
like  a  hickory  nut  dressed  up  in  the  show-feathers  of  a 
purple  ostrich — and  then  presently  he  was  being  pre- 
sented to  the  Mouse,  and  she  was  working  all  sorts  of 
havoc  with  us  who  watched,  by  simply  not  looking  at 
him.  Then  he  was  invited  to  dinner — we  heard  that — 
on  the  count  of  Lady  Sampleton,  and  accepted,  with 
some  neutrality  perhaps,  but  still  he  accepted;  and  Chil- 
tern and  I  went  away  among  the  first,  sulking  like 
mad. 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  303 

"At  least,"  I  said,  when  we  were  half-way  back  to 
the  hotel,  "it  isn't  Fitch. " 

"There  are  worse  things  than  Fitch,"  said  Chiltern, 
gloomily. 

Whereupon   I   ventured   to   ask   what   they  were. 

"This  Johnnie's  worse,"  was  his  very  elaborate 
reasoning,  "because  Fitch  couldn't  get  her,  and  this 
fellow  can." 

I  felt  enamored  of  justice. 

"He  isn't  a  Johnnie,"  said  I,  "and  it  would  be  in- 
correct to  call  him  a  fellow.  He  is  a  very  dukelike  piece 
of  handiwork,  and  we're  nowhere  beside  him." 

"You're  right,"  said  Chiltern,  to  my  surprise. 
"We're  nowhere  beside  him,  especially  in  the  eyes  of 
Bellona." 

The  Psalmist  says  he  has  never  seen  the  righteous 
forsaken,  nor  his  seed  begging  bread.  In  that  regard 
I  am  more  correctly  informed  than  the  Psalmist,  for 
I  have  seen  both;  but  the  thing  I  have  not  seen  is  a 
campaign  conducted  with  more  circumspection  and 
invincible  purpose  than  the  one  whereby  the  De  Lisles 
set  a  gin  for  the  feet  of  the  dukelike  Hare,  and  limed  his 
pathway,  and  threw  salt  upon  his  shining  feathers. 
Every  device  known  to  the  hunter  of  men  they  used 
simultaneously  and  in  due  order,  and  it  would  have 
been  strange  if  such  a  mobilization  of  force  had  come 
to  naught.  One  ally  was  lacking  to  them — the  Mouse 
herself.  She  grew  every  day  paler,  more  spiritualized, 
and  sometimes  we  went  mad  with  the  impulse  to 
champion  her,  and  again  we  dashed  our  impotent  heads 
against  the  walls  of  impalpable  authority  wherein  she 
lived. 


304  VANISHING  POINTS 

"  Would  you  marry  her,  Chiltern?"  I  cried. 
" Would  you  do  it?"  ' 

" Would  I?"  he  roared  at  me.  "Would  I  drink  up 
Eisel  when  I've  got  an  immortal  thirst  on  me?  Would 
I?" 

"Then  why  don't  you  dash  in  and  marry  her  out  of 
hand?" 

"Why  don't  I?  Because  I  can't  get  within  sight  of 
her  eyelashes  with  that  brace  of  watch-dogs  guarding 
her.  I  can't  find  out  whether  she's  ever  seen  me,  even. 
Sometimes  I  think  she  isn't  a  real  girl.  She's  a  wraith,  a 
mist  maiden.  She'll  melt  if  you  touch  her.  Only  we 
can't  touch  her,  and  she  never'll  melt.  Why  don't  I 
dash  in?  Why  don't  I  dash  into  the  czar's  bedchamber 
and  clap  him  on  the  back  and  offer  him  a  dimitrino? 
Why  don't  I  dash  into  the  jungle  and  pull  the  tiger 
king's  tail?" 

This  was,  of  course,  hysteria,  but  at  the  same  time 
truth.  It  was  also  true  that  we  all  looked  on  at  the 
game,  and  we  all,  I  think,  understood.  So  far  as 
matrimonial  desirability  went,  Hare  was  a  prince  of  the 
blood.  He  brought  his  reputation  with  him.  All  the 
dowagers  knew  about  him  in  some  mysterious  way,  as 
news  filters  about  among  savages.  They  haven't  the 
telephone,  but  all  the  same  they  get  hold  of  things. 
You  can't  say  how  it  goes,  but  information — and  as  a 
rule  very  accurate — is  simply  there.  So  it  was  with 
these  Amazons  of  a  thousand  ballrooms.  They  even 
knew  what  advances  he'd  resisted,  not  like  a  cad,  but 
through  honest  flight  once  he'd  felt  the  lariat  flinging 
nearer,  and  they  all  smiled  when  they  saw  America, 
within  the  brocaded  surface  of  this  New  England 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  305 

dame,  walk  into  the  arena,  throw  down  the  same  old 
glove,  and  dare  him  to  the  immemorial  combat.  Only 
it  was  apparently  not  the  same  challenge  at  all.  Bellona 
was  clever,  infernally.  After  that  one  invitation  to 
dine,  instead  of  pursuing,  she  kept  her  ground.  And 
she  absolutely  seemed  to  be  defending  the  Mouse, 
defending  her  from  him,  so  that  whoever  took  the  girl 
out  to  dinner,  he  never  did.  There  were  always  reams 
of  table  linen  between  them.  And  once  when  the 
Mouse  had  promised  him  a  dance,  Bellona  actually 
sailed  down  on  them  and  quashed  it  with  the  fiat  that 
dear  Florence  was  already  overtired.  The  English- 
man's eyes  flashed — I  saw  that — and  next  day  two 
matrons,  by  actual  count,  told  Chiltern,  who  groaned 
it  out  to  me,  that  Hare  had  applied  for  an  interview 
with  Bellona' s  bridegroom,  and  got  it.  And  that  very 
night  the  news  swept  over  us  like  a  special  kind  of  plague 
that  Hare  had,  in  proper  form,  asked  for  the  Mouse  in 
marriage  and  been  accepted.  It  was  added  that  the 
marriage  would  be  hastened,  because  he  had  had  news 
that  his  elder  brother,  Lord  Ormsby,  was  likely  to 
be  at  Simla,  by  way  of  Bombay,  and  that  Hare  had 
been  expected  to  join  him.  And  then  the  date  was 
actually  set.  They  were  to  be  married  at  Calcutta, 
invited  there  by  Lady  Sampleton's  foster-niece. 

When  we  heard  that,  Chiltern  and  I,  we  were  at  the 
club,  trying  to  resist  the  culinary  attentions  of  Fitch. 
The  man  who  told  us  walked  away,  and  Chiltern  looked 
at  me  in  a  manner  he  has  when  one  of  his  grand  pas- 
sions finds  the  earth  caving  in  under  it.  His  lip  twitched 
as  if  it  had  been  denied  some  draught,  and  he  said: 

"Well,  it's  over.    Let's  go  home." 


306  VANISHING  POINTS 

I  was  sorry  for  him  in  a  measure,  but  I  knew  time 
and  change  would  paint  him  a  cheerful  scarlet. 

"Do  you  mean  it?"  I  asked.    "Home?" 

"To  America,"  said  Chiltern. 

We  both  forgot  Fitch,  who  stood  there,  his  little 
eyes  fixed  on  us  with  that  fatuous  acquiescence  he  felt 
in  our  most  commonplace  acts,  and  especially  our 
prowess  in  talking  fool  talk  as  he  couldn't. 

"Actually?"  said  Fitch.    "I'll  go  with  you." 

Chiltern  turned  upon  him  with  what  I  have  heard 
called  the  courage  of  desperation. 

"By  the  way,"  Fitch  continued,  "Flossie  De  Lisle's 
going  to  be  married  Wednesday.  You  wouldn't  want 
to  sail  that  same  day,  would  you?" 

Chiltern  was  looking  him  through,  thinking. 

"No,"  he  said.  "Put  it  off  a  couple  of  weeks,  Fitch. 
Take  the  next  boat." 

"I'll  engage  passage,"  said  Fitch,  with  alacrity. 
There  was  no  porter's  errand  he  wasn't  anxious  to  do 
for  the  reward  of  being  cheek  by  jowl  with  such  bully 
boys  as  we. 

"No,"  said  Chiltern,  "you  engage  your  own  passage, 
and  I'll  attend  to  ours.  By-by,  Fitch,  see  you  soon. 
Got  some  painting  to  finish  now." 

"Painting?"  said  Fitch,  abominably  and  offensively 
interested.  ' '  Got  an  order? ' ' 

"Yes,"  said  Chiltern,  "a  group — a  rajah  and  his 
brandy  paunee." 

"Sho!"  said  Fitch,  who  retained  traces  of  his  country 
breeding.  "Actually!  Well,  do  'em  justice,  Chiltern, 
do  'em  justice.  By  the  way,  Flossie  De  Lisle  and  her 
husband  are  going  up  to  Simla." 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  307 

11  She  hasn't  any  husband/'  growled  Chiltern,  "yet." 

"No/'  said  Fitch,  with  the  cheerfulness  of  the  adipose, 
"not  yet." 

It  was  Saturday,  and  I  was  on  pins  to  go.  I  felt  it 
was  time  to  cut  the  whole  connection,  Fitch  because 
we  couldn't  thole  him,  and  the  Mouse  because  Chiltern 
was  motononously  cherishing  that  idea  of  loving  her. 
And  because  he  cherished  it,  and  because  it  was  fighting 
in  his  system  to  a  horrible  extent,  I  was  going  to  do 
exactly  what  he  said  about  time  and  place,  and  let 
his  sick  fancy  go  wherever  it  felt  it  could  heal  itself. 

"But  it's  not  America,  Pete,"  he  said,  as  we  turned 
away  and  knew  Fitch  was  gingerly  trotting  off,  as  if  the 
pavement  scorched  him,  to  engage  his  passage.  "It's 
Egypt." 

"Egypt?    We  stop  in  Egypt? " 

' '  We  do.  We  take  next  Wednesday's  boat.  We  go  to 
Cairo.  We  interrogate  the  Sphinx.  We  ask  her  what 
the  devil  she  thinks  of  this  business  of  upsetting  a  fel- 
low's nerves  because  a  girl's  got  a  pale  face  and  bright 
hair.  Maybe  we  go  on  into  the  desert.  And  in  two 
weeks  Fitch  takes  the  next  boat  and  steams  by  us  to 
England." 

"Maybe  he'll  stop  at  Egypt,  too." 

"No,  he  won't.  The  day  we  leave  here,  we'll  post 
him  a  passionate  letter,  saying  I'm  summoned  to  paint 
the  Lord  Mayor  of  London,  and  charge  him,  an  he 
loves  us,  to  meet  us  at  the  Mansion  House  six  weeks 
ahead." 

So  he  engaged  passage  under  some  fictitious  name  or 
other,  I  forgot  what  now,  and  we  were  to  sail  the  very 
day  of  the  marriage. 


308  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Go  on  board  at  the  last  minute,"  I  said.  I  had  a 
foolish  fear  Fitch  would  lime  us,  and  we  should  see 
him  behind  us  on  the  deck.  Chiltern's  spirits  were 
coming  up.  Blue  water  was  calling  him,  and  I  saw  he 
wasn't  going  to  spend  his  precious  tears  on  any  in- 
comparable she  who  could  commit  that  last,  worst 
solecism  of  accepting  Another.  He  burst  into  his 
hoot  of  laughter.  I  hadn't  heard  it  since  he  saw  the 
Mouse  first  and  began  to  wear  a  lover's  melancholy. 

"Fitch  won't  see  us,"  he  remarked,  as  if  he  had  a 
pretty  secret.  "If  he  does,  he  won't  know  us.  I've 
laid  in  some  Mohammedan  togs,  for  his  sweet  sake,  and 
we're  going  on  board  in  'em  and  keep  'em  on  till  she's 
under  way." 

"How  do  you  know  they'll  let  us?  How  do  you  know 
there  isn't  a  prejudice  against  nagurs  on  the  P.  &  O.?" 

"Do  you  know  who's  captain  of  our  boat?"  asked 
Chiltern,  with  the  air  of  delivering  a  clincher. 

"No." 

"Tommy  Ridgway." 

"Good!    Will  he  stand  for  it?" 

"Stand  for  anything  we  take  it  into  our  noddles  to 
do." 

So  the  day  of  the  sailing  we  were  on  board  early, 
each  in  a  fancy-ball  costume  where  I  felt  extremely 
foolish  and  somewhat  parasitic,  though  Chiltern  as- 
sured me  he'd  had  the  togs  put  through  some  cleans- 
ing process  and  strictly  sterilized.  We  were  on  deck, 
he  in  a  high  state  of  enjoyment,  and  I  contemplating 
going  below  and  changing  for  Western  wear,  when  he 
quieted  suddenly,  as  if  a  thought  had  him  by  the  throat. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "it's  over." 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  309 

I  stared  at  him  from  under  my  turban. 

"  Over?  "I  said. 

"Yes.    She's  married." 

"Oh,  the  Mouse!  Yes,"  I  said  with  philosophy, 
" she's  married." 

And  then  as  I  watched  the  turmoil  of  the  shore,  I 
saw  a  carriage  drive  up  and  two  women  get  out,  one 
of  them  veiled.  The  other  was  Florence  De  Lisle's 
rawboned,  sallow  maid.  The  first — I  knew  her  through 
her  gauze,  knew  her  walk,  her  height,  her  slenderness — 
was  Florence  De  Lisle  herself.  They  ran  up  the  gang- 
way with  the  unmistakable  air  of  flight  and  came  on 
board.  They  were  near  enough  to  touch  us.  I  grabbed 
Chiltern's  arm,  but  there  was  no  need.  He  was  looking 
at  her,  shocked  into  silence.  The  two  of  them,  mistress 
and  maid,  went  to  the  rail  and  stood  there.  We  swung 
off,  and  still  they  stood  as  if  Calcutta  held  something 
they  feared  or  loved  to  leave.  I  touched  Chiltern  again 
on  the  arm,  and  he  followed  me  to  our  cabin.  There 
we  looked  at  each  other. 

"He  must  be  on  board,"  said  Chiltern,  voicing  the 
thought  of  both  of  us. 

"He's  not.  A  bridegroom  come  on  board  and  let  his 
bride  come  after?" 

"No!" 

"She's  run  away?"  I  asked,  almost,  I  believe, 
piteously  in  the  extremity  of  my  wonder. 

"Yes.    She  hates  him." 

"Run  away  before  the  ceremony!" 

"Yes.  Good  God!  Peter,  here  she  is  on  board  with 
us  for  sixteen  days  of  solitude  and  the  open  sea." 

"Come  back,  Chiltern,"  I  charged  him.     "Think 


310  VANISHING  POINTS 

what  you're  saying.  If  she's  run  away  from  him, 
there'll  be  the  devil's  own  row.  There'd  be  row  enough 
if  she  went  alone.  But  we  two  are  on  board,  and  the 
world's  wife  will  say  she  went  with  us." 

He  opened  his  mouth  and  looked  at  me  as  if  he 
could  roar  down  the  hatefulness  of  it  all. 

"  With  you,  at  least,"  I  said.  "  And  that  I  stood  by 
you,  or  indecently  followed  on." 

Chiltern  halted  there  looking  down  on  his  perfectly 
cleansed  costume.  Then  his  eye  travelled  over  mine. 

"  We've  got  to  keep  these  on,"  he  said. 

"The  whole  voyage?" 

"Yes.  I'll  go  and  see  Bidgway.  I'll  tell  him  we 
consider  it  a  kind  of  a  joke — Ridgway  knows  we're  a 
pah*  of  fools — oh,  damn,  Peter,  damn!" 

"You  won't  mention  her?"     I  called  after  him. 

"Mention  her?  I'm  going  to  save  her  from  being 
mentioned." 

He  was  gone  perhaps  half  an  hour,  and  I  sat  on  my 
bunk  and  meditated.  I  felt  like  a  fool  in  my  disguise 
which  seemed  well  enough  on  shore,  and  in  for  an 
adventure  all  primary  school  folly  and  neither  fun  nor 
glory  in  it.  When  Chiltern  came  back  he  took  his  place 
beside  me  and  also  meditated.  Then  he  came  to  him- 
self. 

"Well,"  said  he,  "how  do  you  suppose  they're  reg- 
istered?" 

I  couldn't  guess,  and  he  added,  as  if  it  capped  the 
top  of  wonder: 

"Mrs.  Hare  and  maid." 

"Then  she's  married."  That  was  all  that  occurred 
to  me  to  say.  "Married  and  he's  not  here.  Well," 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  311 

I  mused,  after  another  soggy  moment,  "  she's  run  away. 
As  you  say,  she  hates  him." 

And  I  could  see  through  the  thin  veil  of  Chiltern's 
quiet,  moved  only  by  a  breathing  like  a  racing  tug, 
that  he  was  wondering  by  chance  whether  there  was  a 
man  she  did  not  hate. 

The  tension  of  that  sixteen  days'  voyage  tires  me 
now  to  think  of.  Mrs.  Hare — the  Mouse  no  longer — 
was  going  on  to  England;  then,  ten  days  out,  she 
changed  her  mind,  Ridgway  said,  and  was  going  to  stop 
off  in  Egypt.  Chiltern  and  I  kept  our  staterooms 
except  after  dark,  and  we  made  the  deck  our  own  for 
the  greater  part  of  the  night.  Even  to  Ridgway,  we 
didn't  own  why  we  wanted  our  identities  sealed  as  the 
grave.  It  was  a  bet,  we  told  him,  and  then,  in  an 
exuberance  of  bitter  fancy,  a  bet  with  Fitch,  whom  he 
also  knew,  that  we  couldn't  or  wouldn't  travel  incog, 
to  Cairo. 

Chiltern  was  torn  in  two  by  the  aching  wonder  of  it 
all.  He  pondered  whether  she  perhaps  guessed  he  was 
on  board — nobody  thought  of  the  possibility  of  her 
loving  me — or  whether  she  was  just  flying  for  terror  of 
what  she'd  left  behind.  He  felt  himself  in  the  midst  of 
an  adventure  beside  which  the  tales  of  Scheherezade 
are  as  the  babblings  of  Tupper,  and  yet,  like  a  clear 
blue  sky  above  his  tragedy  stage,  was  the  unalterable 
determination  in  us  both  that  a  good  girl  should  not  be 
compromised.  More  than  that,  she  should  not  fall  into 
dangers  unguessed  by  her,  as  they  were  as  yet  by  us. 
Sometimes  we  didn't  more  than  half  trust  the  maid. 
She  looked  like  a  locked  black  morocco  bag,  for  silence. 
What  did  she  know,  we  wondered,  or  had  she  planned 


312  VANISHING  POINTS 

the  flight?  Was  the  Mouse  somehow  in  her  power,  and 
where  was  the  Portmanteau  taking  her?  They  stayed 
in  their  own  cabin  a  good  deal,  we  found  by  chance  from 
Ridgway,  and  it's  safe  to  say  the  voyage  was  the 
stuffiest  one  the  four  of  us  had  ever  had.  Then  at  last 
Cairo,  and  we  followed  them  to  Shepheard's  and  heard 
them  make  their  bargain,  with  a  good  deal  of  dignity 
on  the  part  of  the  Mouse,  and  saw  them  going  to  their 
rooms.  We  turned  out  incontinently  upon  that, 
though  we  had  apparently  been  waiting  till  the  English 
ladies  should  be  served,  went  to  a  trustworthy  dive 
Chiltern  knew  about,  and  there  washed  our  faces  and 
got  into  the  dress  of  American  men  of  respectable 
degree.  Then  we  took  rooms  at  the  Hotel  de  Londres, 
opposite  Shepheard's,  and  again  forswore  the  air  of 
heaven  to  sit  at  our  windows  and  note  whether  or  when 
our  mysterious  dames  came  forth.  They  did,  and  we 
followed  them  at  a  distance.  The  Mouse  seemed 
interested  in  shops,  timid  about  bargaining,  but 
spirited  and  even  happy.  She  walked  differently, 
with  her  head  up  and  a  certain  swing  and  go  amazing 
to  us.  Her  cheeks,  so  pale  when  we  had  watched  her  at 
Darj  heeling,  had  the  slightest  flush.  Whether  she  ever 
saw  us  or  not,  we  could  not  tell.  By  that  time  we  were 
worn  and  fractious  with  the  queerness  of  it  all,  and 
sometimes  there  seemed  to  be  no  reason  why  she 
shouldn't  see  us.  Only,  if  she  did,  there  was  a  per- 
fectly understood  compact  between  us  that  no  one 
should  be  recognized.  But  the  growing  change  in  her! 
Every  day  she  seemed  to  be  more  buoyant,  more 
intoxicated  with  something  that  looked  like  expecta- 
tion. 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  313 

"If  this  keeps  on,"  said  Chiltern  one  night  from  the 
darkness  of  his  chamber  where  we  sat  together,  "we 
shall  forget  she  was  the  Mouse." 

"So  I  thought/'  I  answered,  "though  it's  beyond 
me  what  to  call  her  now." 

"Me,  too,"  he  said,  "unless  it's  the  leopard." 

"No,  the  leopard's  cruel,  when  she  likes.  This 
girl's  not  cruel.  Only  she's  alive  at  last — and  wonder- 
ful." 

"Yes,"  said  Chiltern,  sucking  at  his  pipe.  "She's 
wonderful." 

So  it  went  on  for  three  weeks,  a  month,  and  then 
another  night  Chiltern  came  in  to  me  with  business 
written  over  him. 

"Stir  your  stumps,"  he  said.  "They're  going  to  the 
Pyramids  by  moonlight." 

"How  do  you  know?" 

"Heard  the  order  given.  Walked  into  Shepheard's 
to  ask  fool  questions  and  see  whether  they  were  in  the 
garden,  saw  the  maid  come  down,  heard  the  carriage 
ordered." 

"They're  going  in  a  carriage'?' 

"Yes." 

"By  themselves?" 

"Apparently." 

"I  don't  like  that.     They're  safer  in  the  tram." 

"Well,  you're  going  too,  so  you  might  as  well  like  it." 

"Oh,  yes,"  I  said  absently,  "of  course  I'm  going 
myself,  but  I  don't  like  that  either.  I  wish  we  were 
all  at  Coney  Island  seeing  the  moving  pictures — or 
down  at  Cuttyhunk." 

So  when  the  carriage  came  round  to  take  the  Mouse 


314  VANISHING  POINTS 

and  the  Portmanteau  out  to  the  Pyramids  the  ancient 
kings  seemed  to  have  builded  for  the  special  purpose  of  a 
scene  setting  for  all  that  was  to  do,  two  saddle- 
horses  were  waiting  at  our  door,  and  after  a  suitable 
interval,  Ghiltern  and  I  mounted  and  followed  on 
behind  like  a  particularly  asinine  branch  of  special 
police. 

"I'm  thinking,"  I  said,  while  the  leather  creaked. 

"What?"    Chiltern  flung  at  me. 

"That  somehow  this  night 's  the  night  that  settles 
it." 

"Yes."    He  bit  the  word  off  sharp.    "It  is." 

"And  I'm  thinking  if  she  does  recognize  you,  and  you 
forget  Hare,  you'll  tell  her  how  we've  followed  her. 
You'll  tell  her  a  good  many  things." 

"I  sha'n't  forget  Hare,"  said  he  savagely. 

"Don't,"  I  recommended. 

If  you're  going  to  be  in  love,  which,  I  contend,  is  a 
special  curse  only  ameliorated  by  the  inevitable  oblivion 
at  the  end,  there's  no  place  to  be  in  love  like  the  country 
where  Cleopatra  wooed  her  Antony.  Moonlight  and 
the  Pyramids,  the  avenue  of  lebbek  trees,  the  Libyan 
hills  beyond  where  we  could  see,  and  holding  it  all,  like 
a  sorceress  with  her  lap  full  of  sleepy  runes,  Egypt. 
Whole  reams  of  poetry,  stuff  I  hadn't  thought  of  since 
I  was  twenty,  came  rushing  into  my  head,  and  I  swear 
I  don't  know  to  this  day  whether  it  was  mine  or  Shake- 
speare's. 

"If  I  speak,"  I  said,  and  I  knew  I  said  it  drunkenly, 
"I  shall  speak  in  verse." 

Chiltern  understood.  He  answered  with  a  perfect 
gravity: 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  315 

"Yes.  Don't  do  it,  though.  We  couldn't  any  of  us 
bear  it." 

By  that  "any  of  us"  I  saw  he  included  in  our  possible 
meeting,  the  woman  in  the  carriage  ahead. 

We  were  riding  slowly  to  keep  well  away,  and  sud- 
denly we  became  aware,  at  the  same  moment,  I  think, 
of  a  mad  rhythm  of  hoofs  behind  us.  There  was  one 
man  riding,  riding  like  the  wild  huntsman  at  least. 

"That's  business,"  said  Chiltern. 

"Let  him  pass  us,"  I  threw  back  at  him.  "We  can 
keep  an  eye  on  him  and  ride  him  down." 

The  rhythm  of  hoofs  came  nearer.  The  man  rode 
with  a  reckless  haste,  and  no  eye  for  us,  save  to  turn 
out.  He  was  abreast  of  us.  He  passed,  and  we,  by  one 
impulse,  started  our  horses  into  the  same  wild  gallop 
and  kept  on  with  him. 

"You  saw!"  Chiltern  cried  out  to  me. 

"I  saw,"  I  answered,  with,  I  think,  as  savage  em- 
phasis. 

The  man  was  Hare.  He  was  still  ahead  of  us,  going 
like  all  possessed,  and  we  doubled  our  pace.  We  were 
twenty  feet  behind  him,  and  he  at  least  twenty-five 
feet  behind  the  carriage,  and  he  now,  as  if  this  were 
exactly  the  distance  he  had  determined  upon,  dropped 
into  an  easy  trot,  and  we  did  the  same.  So  there  we 
were  at  an  even  pace,  not  to  meet,  it  seemed,  until  we 
reached  some  point  tacitly  decreed,  which  was  pre- 
sumably the  Pyramids.  And  now  the  Pyramid  was 
looming  up  before  us,  a  black  bulk  of  velvet  in  the  dark. 
Once  only  I  spoke  to  Chiltern.  I  reined  in  beside 
him. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?"  I  asked. 


316  VANISHING  POINTS 

He  turned  his  head  to  me  and  I  saw,  or  thought  I  saw, 
in  the  moonlight,  that  his  eyes  were  bloodshot. 

"It  depends/'  he  said.  He  was  breathing  short  and 
hard.  "If  she  hates  him,  kill  him." 

But  I  knew  he  wasn't  armed — or  thought  I  knew 
it — and  wondered,  in  a  dull  way,  what  he  would  find 
to  do  the  deed,  and  thought  with  distaste  of  the  whole 
embroilment;  and  by  and  by  we  were  there,  and  the 
monument  of  ages  was  looking  majestically  down  on  us 
and  our  midget  passions.  The  Bedouins  were  wrangling 
for  a  big  party  of  English  that  had  come  to  see  the 
Pyramids  by  moonlight,  so  that  they  forgot  briefly  to 
wrangle  for  us,  and  the  English  mamma  was  so  exercised 
over  finding  at  the  last  minute  that  Baedeker  had  im- 
plied the  young  ladies  should  wear  divided  skirts 
(which  they  had  not  provided),  that  she  was  forbidding 
them  stridently  to  ascend  at  all,  and  that  gave  the 
Bedouins  matter  for  more  entreaty.  In  the  little  out- 
side swirl  of  peace  beside  these  tempestuous  forces,  the 
Mouse  had  alighted,  given  her  driver  an  order,  and  with 
the  Black  Portmanteau  turned  aside  to  a  remoter  space 
where,  it  was  evident,  she  meant  to  observe  the  Pyra- 
mids and  the  heavens  for  a  moment  by  "  the  world  for- 
got". While  they  did  this,  Hare  sat  his  horse  like  a 
statue,  watching  them;  but  when  it  was  fairly  evident 
that  this  was  what  she  meant  to  do,  he  flung  himself 
out  of  the  saddle,  gave  a  Bedouin  the  bridle  to  hold,  the 
act  accompanied  by  a  few  terse  words  wherein  I  de- 
tected the  name  of  the  Prophet  and  "bakshish",  and 
strode  off  after  the  Mouse.  Chiltern  threw  himself 
off  his  horse,  selected  another  Bedouin,  repeated  Hare's 
promise  and  potential  curse,  and  gave  him  the  bridle. 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  317 

Then  I  did  the  same,  nailing  another  son  of  Egypt,  and 
Chiltern  followed  Hare  and  I  followed  Chiltern.  And 
by  the  time  we  reached  the  man  and  woman,  and 
halted  at  a  distance  of  perhaps  five  paces,  we  both  saw 
at  the  same  instant  that  Hare  had  put  out  his  hands  and 
the  Mouse  had,  with  the  quickest  gesture  of  entire 
abandon,  gripped  them  with  hers.  There  they  stood 
looking  in  each  other's  faces  with  a  tense,  drawn, 
spiritualized,  perfectly  happy  look,  and  the  moon 
Cleopatra  saw  when  she  fed  upon  Antony's  face  was 
shining  on  there  in  the  old  way,  and  the  desert  was 
whispering  outside,  and  the  goddess  Hathor  walked 
the  sands  that  night  and  drenched  us  all,  each  with  the 
particular  philter  conducing  to  his  own  especial  mad- 
ness. I  had  time  for  a  look  at  the  maid,  the  Black 
Portmanteau,  and  I  saw  she  had  really  withdrawn  her- 
self, as  if  somehow  this  climax  were  what  she  had  been 
expecting  all  along,  and  had  prepared  herself  for  as 
something  it  would  be  a  part  of  her  correct  training  to 
ignore.  So  she  looked  at  the  moon,  and  looked  at  the 
Pyramid,  and  thought,  I  doubted  not,  of  some  glorious 
maitre  d'hotel  who  had  enslaved  her  heart  in  the  course 
of  her  wanderings,  and  whom  she  would  see  no  more. 
What  was  the  odds,  maitre  d'hotel  or  Chiltern,  Hare  or 
Antony?  The  moon  knew  all  about  it  equally.  While 
I  thought  these  gibbering  thoughts,  Hare  looked  at  his 
wife — oh,  I  knew  it  now! — and  she  looked  straight  at 
him.  No  more  veiling  of  lids,  no  more  retreating  into 
the  sanctuary  of  maidens-all-alone.  They  looked,  and 
as  if  they  adored  each  other  and  were  sustained,  exalted 
by  what  they  saw.  He  spoke,  in  a  rough,  broken  way 
that  might  have  made  you  cry,  if  you  were  not,  like 


318  VANISHING  POINTS 

Chiltern,  framed  of  jealous  wonder  and,  like  me, 
curiosity  made  man. 

"Why?"  the  Englishman  kept  saying.  "Why? 
Why?" 

Then  she  answered  him,  in  a  voice  all  passionate 
pride. 

"Why?  Because  I'd  been  thrown  at  you.  They'd 
hunted  you  down  and  snared  you." 

"Why  not  have  told  me?"  he  raged.  "If  you  were 
so  proud,  I'd  have  been  humbler." 

"I  couldn't  tell  you,"  she  said,  and  there  she  gave  a 
sob .  "I  was  ashamed . ' ' 

"Ashamed?"  That  he  said  as  if  it  broke  his  heart, 
too,  that  he  should  have  to  think  it  of  her. 

"Of  my  people,  my  country,  myself.  They'd  kept 
me  close  till  I'd  died  of  cold.  I'd  withered  into  some- 
thing I'm  afraid  to  think  of.  They'd  tried  to  sell  me  to 
other  men  with  money,  and  one  with  a  title,  and  I'd 
frozen  them  out,  but  you " 

She  couldn't  go  on.  No  more  could  she  look  at  him 
now.  Her  face  turned  away  a  little,  and  I  thought, 
if  it  had  been  dawn  instead  of  moonlight,  he  might  have 
seen  her  forehead,  even,  deep  with  red.  But  this  was 
the  moment  when  he  understood. 

"Dearest,"  he  said,  just  that  one  word,  and  she 
began  to  cry,  softly,  with  no  sobs  or  whimpering,  only 
I  was  perfectly  sure  the  tears  were  flowing  down  her 
cheeks. 

"You  ran  away!"  said  Hare.  He  spoke  as  a  very 
loving  person  does  to  a  naughty  child;  and  then  the 
Mouse  did  something  no  one  ever  saw  her  do  in  the 
past  days  of  her  frozen  girlhood.  She  laughed  out  long 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  319 

and  gay,  a  warm,  bright  flood,  in  the  very  face  of  the 
Pyramid  and  Egypt. 

"I  ran  away,"  she  said. 

"What  for?"  asked  Hare. 

"For  you  to  follow."     This  she  said  brazenly. 

"What  for?   Why  was  I  to  follow? " 

"Don't  you  know?  So  I  could  be  courted  and  per- 
suaded as  girls  ought  to  be,  as  an  American  girl  has 
got  to  be.  Oh,  you  don't  know  me  yet!  Wait  till  you 
know  me,  Englishman!" 

We  had  none  of  us  known  her,  I  saw  that;  I  heard  it 
in  her  thrilling  voice,  the  strength  and  will  and  passion 
it  flung  for  all  the  airs  of  Egypt  to  carry  to  whatever 
ears  they  would.  The  Englishman  straightened;  a 
quiver  ran  through  him.  He  accepted,  I  saw,  all  her 
unspoken  challenges. 

"Was  I  to  meet  you  here?"  he  asked.  That  same 
dauntless  thrill  was  in  his  voice,  the  one  we  heard  in 
hers.  "Was  this  intended?  Does  this  content  you?" 

"Why?" 

"Because  if  it  doesn't  I'll  leave  you  here.  You  shall 
go  on  alone,  and  I'll  follow  for  as  long  as  you  like,  and 
as  far  as  you  like.  And  I'll  kiss  your  footprints  all  the 
way." 

That  was  doing  pretty  well  for  an  Englishman,  I 
thought,  and  then  I  remembered  that  Shakespeare 
wrote  in  English,  and,  for  the  matter  of  that,  a  man 
named  Rossetti.  She  was  answering. 

"You  were  not  to  meet  me  here.  It  was  to  be  longer, 
England,  America,  perhaps.  But  I  got  tired  of  wait- 
ing." 

Her  voice  dropped.    She  had  waited  for  him  over  one 


320  VANISHING  POINTS 

steamer,  and  she  was  tired  of  waiting.  And  then  Hare 
bent  toward  her  in  the  face  of  Egypt  and  the  haggling 
Bedouins,  the  skirted  English  daughters,  the  Pyramids 
and  the  moon,  and  she  made  haste  to  meet  him,  and 
they  kissed  each  other,  and  Hare  drew  her  into  his 
arms  and  they  may  have  kissed  again.  But  I  missed 
Chiltern  from  my  side,  and  looked  about  for  him.  He 
was  back  there  by  the  ruffling  tourists,  mounting  his 
horse,  and  the  Bedouin  was  examining  the  bakshish 
given  him,  and  apparently  thinking  it  a  plenty,  for  he 
called  upon  the  Prophet  to  rain  honey  upon  Chiltern 
while  at  the  same  time,  begging  him  to  stay  and  climb 
the  Pyramid,  accompanying  his  remarks  with  some 
grotesque  adjuration  about  Mark  Twain.  But  Chiltern 
was  riding  off,  and  I  got  my  horse  in  haste  and  rode 
after  him,  though  to  the  tune  of  curses  because  my  coin 
had  been  less  abounding.  Through  the  long,  sluggish 
ride  back  to  the  hotel  we  did  not  speak;  but  that  night 
I  did  gather  from  Chiltern  that  we  were  to  leave  Cairo 
next  morning. 

Next  morning  we  did  leave;  and  as  we  were  going 
down  the  steps  of  the  Hotel  de  Londres  for  the  last 
time  that  trip,  we  came  full  upon  a  man  and  woman, 
she  in  the  most  beautiful  clothes  even  an  American 
bride  ever  clothed  herself  withal,  yet  simple  as  the 
sheath  round  a  flower,  and  he  with  a  bridegroom's 
proudest  sovereignty  written  on  him.  This  the  Mouse? 
It  was  a  creature  with  rose-mantled  cheek  and  eyes 
that  looked  straight  at  you,  rejoiceful,  shining,  with 
things  promised  in  their  depths  that  would  take  the 
happy  bridegroom  a  thousand  years  to  learn.  She 
stopped,  put  out  her  hand  to  Chiltern,  then  to  me. 


THE  FLIGHT  OF  THE  MOUSE  321 

She  looked  at  us  both,  half  tenderly,  even  half  in 
whimsical  confession,  the  sort  where  the  mouth  smiles 
and  the  brows  are  rueful. 

"  You've  been  awfully  good,"  she  said. 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY 

HE  was  one  of  the  most  intrepid  of  our  war  corre- 
spondents, and  his  name  was  Mitchell.  Some- 
thing was  being  said  about  the  creation  of 
little  imaginary  kingdoms  since  the  Prisoner  of  Zenda 
showed  the  way.  One  of  us  had  smiled  at  the  poverty  of 
imagination  visible  in  the  efflorescence  of  multiple 
kingdoms,  but  it  was  somebody  who  had  no  more 
conception  of  the  richness  of  cerebral  life  involved  in 
even  daring  to  infringe  the  Zenda  copyright  than  he 
had  of  the  force  that  goes  to  the  bursting  of  buds  in 
the  spring. 

"But  you  know/'  said  Mitchell,  " there  really  are 
those  little  kingdoms,  rafts  of  'em,  if  you're  clever 
enough  to  hunt  'em  down." 

"You  don't  mean  to  tell  me,"  said  I,  "that  any  inch 
of  Europe  lies  there  uncharted,  waiting  for  your  swash- 
buckling pen?  That  you  can  put  out  a  careless  finger, 
to  the  east  presumably,  somewhere  round  Bulgaria 
or  Roumania,  and  hit  a  kingdom  made  to  your  hand?  " 

"Oh,  but  they  exist,"  said  he,  with  the  irritating 
dogmatism  of  the  man  who  has  in  his  pocket  the  very 
fact  that  will  floor  you,  meaning  to  conclude  later 
whether  to  bring  it  out. 

"Where?" 

"Oh,  lots  of  places:  men's  minds,  if  you  like." 

My  triumph  this, — but  I  was  not  allowed  to  score. 

322 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY        323 

"I  could  tell  you  what  happened  in  one  of  these 
same  kingdoms." 

"Same  latitude,  I  dare  say,  round  the  corner  from 
Roumania?  " 

"Not  so  far  away.  We'll  call  it  the  kingdom  of 
Arcady.  Good  old  name.  Stands  for  illogical  content, 
makes  you  lubricated  and  expectant  at  the  start.  I 
dropped  in  there  because  for  five  years  there' d  been  the 
most  eccentric  goings  on.  King  Solon — I'm  making 
up  names — he'd  died,  and  his  wife,  Queen  Ismia,  in 
the  minority  of  the  young  prince,  Belphcebus,  had 
been  acting  regent.  The  things  that  woman  had  done! 
To  begin  with,  the  king,  some  time  before  his  death, 
had  got  up  a  report  that  a  few  of  his  former  subjects 
living  in  the  little  province  of  Flos,  nominally  under 
the  protection  of  the  King  of  Altaria,  were  unjustly 
treated  there.  They  were  allowed  to  naturalize  only 
after  a  residence  of  seven  years.  During  that  seven 
years  they  were  ineligible  for  public  office,  and  he  called 
it  a  sin  and  a  shame  to  leave  them  unchampioned.  So 
he  proposed  to  annex  Flos — for  purely  philanthropic 
reasons,  mind  you, — and  he  did  it.  The  Florians  didn't 
make  any  resistance.  They'd  been  indifferently  miser- 
able under  the  Altarians,  and  couldn't  do  much  worse 
here." 

"What  did  the  King  of  Altaria  say  to  it?" 

"Oh,  he  did  what  a  pig  does  at  crucial  points  of  pig 
history.  He  squealed.  Because,  you  see,  he  knew  the 
true  inwardness." 

"Paternal  feeling?" 

"Not  for  a  minute.  That  was  the  second  reason, 
made  to  wear  outside.  There's  always  a  serviceable 


324  VANISHING  POINTS 

reason  hidden  by  the  other,  like  a  flannel  petticoat  under 
mother's  black  silk.  The  real  reason  was  that  the 
Florians  had  discovered  quicksilver  to  an  astounding 
extent.  It  was  a  good  time  to  annex  'em.  Also  because 
Altaria  was  busy  with  a  boundary  war  on  her  other 
border,  with  the  Tellurians.  I  never  felt  sure  Arcady 
and  old  Telluria  hadn't  hatched  up  the  whole  thing 
between  themselves  and  shared  the  loot.  Briefly,  then, 
Flos  became  Arcadian." 

"Wasn't  there  any  row?"  said  I.  "Didn't  it  stir 
up  the  tribunal  at  The  Hague?  I  never  heard — " 

"You  make  me  tired,"  said  Mitchell.  "When  I 
tell  you  these  things  happened,  if  you're  a  polite  person 
you  won't  pin  me  down  and  ask  me  fool  questions.  It 
hurts  my  professional  feelings.  Well,  the  first  thing 
Queen  Ismia  did  was  to  ask  the  Florians  if  they  wanted 
to  be  given  back.  They  deliberated.  They'd  developed 
a  caution  bump  after  untold  experiences  of  frying-pan 
and  fire,  and  they  implied  they'd  wait  and  see  how  the 
regent  behaved  herself,  and  whether  the  prince  was  a 
good  provider  and  the  old  ship  of  state  didn't  seem 
likely  to  careen  too  far.  The  queen  was  all  there  from 
the  start.  She  shortened  the  hours  of  work  for  the  silk 
spinners,  and  she  built  up  the  national  theatre.  And 
on  Lady  Day  the  girls  from  the  silk  mill  would  come  to 
the  palace,  bales  in  hand,  and  present  them  toward 
the  support  of  the  theatre.  They  came  crowned  with 
garlands  and  sang  national  songs,  old  ones  dug  out  of 
the  past  by  a  poet  they  had,  and  altogether  it  was  a 
proud  little  festival.  It  brought  tears  to  the  eyes,  if 
you'll  permit  the  banality.  And  so  it  was  with  all 
trades.  If  workers  wanted  to  give  a  little  bit  of  extra 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY        325 

time,  they  were  furnished  with  raw  material,  and  they 
threw  in  the  finished  product  toward  the  national 
theatre.  So  it  was  their  theatre.  See?  " 

I  was  irritating  enough  to  ask  here  if  he  were  a  so- 
cialist, and  he  brought  his  complex  capable  hand  down 
on  the  table. 

"Now,"  said  he,  "don't  accuse  me  of  propaganda. 
I'm  telling  you  what  happened,  that's  all.  And  it 
happened.  You'd  better  believe  it.  It  was  always  my 
impression  that  the  queen  had  shown  all  a  woman's 
guile — a  woman's  in  addition  to  a  queen's,  and  you 
know  a  queen  must  have  some  instinct  of  statecraft 
even  if  she's  only  expected  to  bear  princes.  She's 
neighbor  to  it,  so  to  speak,  and  snuffed  it  in  with  her 
breath.  She  had  used  her  arsenal  of  persuasive  weapons 
to  convince  the  kingdom  it  wasn't  she  that  brought 
about  the  kind,  pretty,  sanitary  ways  of  government, 
but  the  prince.  All  through  his  minority  she  was  weav- 
ing a  magic  carpet  for  him  to  ride  straight  into  the 
affections  of  his  people.  And  he  had  done  that  very 
thing.  He  was  a  fine  upstanding  fellow  with  honest 
eyes,  but  not  tried  at  all  as  yet,  not  forced  up  against 
circumstance  and  made  to  take  his  leap  or  die  in  the 
ditch.  My  first  sight  of  him  was  the  day  I  pottered  into 
the  kingdom.  I  was  in  no  particular  hurry,  and  I 
wanted  to  go  in  just  that  way,  walking,  rucksack  for 
luggage,  to  test  the  democratic  feel  of  the  place.  I'd 
heard  a  lot  about  it,  and  if  there  was  plenty  of  material 
lying  round  loose,  I  was  going  to  write  a  book.  Just 
as  I  was  sitting  down  by  the  road  side — there  was  an 
oleander  hedge  at  my  back — to  eat  my  cheese  sandwich, 
to  give  me  heart  to  storm  the  castle,  a  young  man  went 


326  VANISHING  POINTS 

by,  clattery-bing,  on  a  big  gray  horse.  Two  old  road- 
menders  saluted,  and  he  returned  it  in  a  kind  of  gayety 
I  liked;  and  then  the  road-menders,  as  if  they  couldn't 
contain  their  pride  in  him,  turned  to  me  and  clacked, 
That's  our  prince/" 

"'Oh/  said  I,  blowing  my  sandwich  (for  microbes 
are  no  respecters  of  the  dust  of  princes),  'where's  his 
retinue? '" 

"One  of  the  old  men  was  bent  like  a  sickle,  but  he 
straightened  up  to  something  rather  magnificent. 

"' That's  our  prince/  said  he.  'Our  prince  has  no 
call  for  guards.  We're  Arcadians.  He's  Prince  of 
Arcady.' 

"But  I  turned,  by  the  chance  that  is  the  inner  direc- 
tion of  the  mind,  and  saw  in  the  field  a  running  figure. 
It  leaped  ditches.  It  ran  like  a  scarecrow  made  of 
sticks,  and  I  even  fancied  scarecrow's  rags  were  flut- 
tering from  its  thin,  swift  legs. 

"'Look  at  that/  said  I.  '  Is  that  going  to  head  off 
your  prince? ' 

"But  the  gaffer  had  gone  back  to  his  chronic  apathy, 
and  looked,  open-mouthed,  for  a  minute,  and  then  fell 
to  work  at  his  stones.  And  I  finished  my  sandwich,  and 
tramped  on  into  the  town  and  up  to  the  open  castle 
gates.  I  had  understood  that  in  Arcady  you  might 
have  free  access  to  the  prince  and  Queen  Ismia,  and 
indeed  might  claim  shelter  there  so  long  as  the  bedrooms 
held  out.  There  was  a  soldier  at  the  gate,  a  sympathetic 
sort  of  fellow,  and  finding  by  my  own  word  that  I  was 
an  American  on  my  travels,  with  a  great  desire  to  pay 
my  respects,  he  passed  me  on,  and  another  official  did 
the  same;  and  I  was  actually,  toil-stained  as  I  was  from 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY        327 

my  tramp  and  the  prince's  passing,  led  into  the  morning- 
room  where  the  prince  and  his  mother  were  at  table 
like  any  simple  folk.  The  signs  of  grandeur  were  in  the 
hall  itself,  the  wonderful  lancet-windows,  the  cedars 
outside  with  centuries  since  Lebanon  in  then:  bones, — 
and,  too,  in  the  prince  and  his  mother,  the  very  cut  of 
them.  They  looked  mighty  nice  to  me,  that  mother 
and  son.  She  was  a  slim,  small  woman — yes,  really 
little;  there  wasn't  much  to  her  except  her  royal  man- 
ners— with  lots  of  white  hair,  and  he  was  the  big  lad 
I  told  you  about.  They  wore  the  ancient  costume  of 
the  country,  and  it  fitted  the  lancet-windows  like  a 
glove.  I  was  prepared  for  that.  It  had  been  one  of  her 
astounding  clevernesses,  though  ascribed,  of  course, 
to  the  prince.  They  had  thought  it  encouraging  to 
national  feeling,  national  industries,  to  return  to  the 
national  dress.  No  head  waiter's  swallow-tail  in  his. 
No  Parisian  latest  agony  for  the  lady.  The  clothes 
were  ready  for  a  picture  gallery,  for  grand  opera.  And 
they  looked  indestructible.  I  could  believe  they'd  been 
laid  away  in  cedar  chests  for  longer  than  the  prince 
had  lived. 

"The  queen  had  my  card  beside  her  plate.  She 
smiled  at  me  and  she  looked  very  charming.  I  could 
see  at  once  she  was  the  sort  of  woman  you  want  to 
pick  a  nosegay  for,  or  lay  down  your  cloak  in  the  mud. 

"'You  have  come  on  a  gala  day/  said  she.  'We  are 
going  on  pilgrimage.  Will  you  join  us? ' 

"The  man  had  brought  another  plate — there  was 
very  informal  service — and  the  prince  motioned  me 
to  his  right  hand.  And  I  sat  down  as  I  was,  and  wished 
I  had  not  eaten  the  cheese  sandwich." 


328  VANISHING  POINTS 

"What  language  do  they  speak?"    I  asked. 

"Oh,  any  language.  There's  an  Arcadian  patois 
something  like  German,  but  often  they  speak  French." 

"They  knew  who  you  were, ' '  said  I .  " They  had  your 
card.  They  wouldn't  admit  any  obscure  man  to  break- 
fast .  You  know  that,  Mitchell . ' ' 

"Oh,  go  'way,"  said  Mitchell.  "Go  'way  wid  yer 
blarney.  Anyhow,  I  was  there,  and  the  queen  was 
good  to  me.  Well,  I  asked  lots  about  Arcady,  hinted 
at  my  book,  and  they  were  as  right  down  cosey  and 
sensible  as  you  please.  She,  the  queen,  came  to  business 
at  once,  straight  as  a  string.  She  told  me  what  the 
prince  had  done  to  touch  up  the  government  and  trim 
it  with  gimp  and  fancy  lace,  and  how  they'd  gone  a 
long  way  on  the  road  before  anybody  got  wind  of  it. 
They're  such  an  inconsiderable  kingdom,  you  see,  in 
point  of  territory.  Even  you  never  heard  of  'em." 

"Mrs.  Prig  never  did  either,"  said  I.  "We  'don't 
believer  there's  no  sich  a  person.' ': 

"Well,  you  pack  your  grip  next  summer,  and  I'll 
buy  you  a  ticket  and  give  you  an  elementary  phrase- 
book  and  you  see.  But  when  the  outlying  continents 
did  hear  of  the  changes  in  Arcady,  first  they  got  gay. 
They  said,  ' Arcady's  looking  up.'  Then  they  said  it 
was  comic  opera.  Then  when  they  began  to  run  over 
the  tax  list  it  made  'em  sit  up.  But  I'm  giving  you  only 
the  retail  side  of  it.  When  breakfast  was  over,  we  three, 
the  prince  and  the  queen  and  me,  plain  American,  we 
went  out  to  walk  on  the  terrace,  and  there  was  a  sunken 
garden  and  a  peacock  strutting  back  and  forth  through 
a  pleached  alley,  and  there  were  flags  on  the  towers. 
And  the  queen  began  to  tell  me  what  a  festival  it  was 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY  329 

to-day:  for  you  see,  by  luck,  it  was  the  day  for  the  silk- 
weavers  to  come  and  bring  their  bales;  and  by  George 
they  did  come,  and  a  mighty  pretty  sight  it  was,  girls 
walking  two  and  two,  holding  up  their  bales  as  if  they 
were  shields  with  heroes  on  'em,  and  everybody  gar- 
landed. And  the  girls  sang:  and  the  songs  were  all 
gentle,  simple  songs  of  sowing  seed  and  reaping  grain 
and  blessing  the  apple-trees  and  thanking  the  good 
God.  And  then  the  queen  asked  me  if  I  had  ever  heard 
of  Erdreich,  the  poet,  and  I  said  I  had,  and  knew  a  lot 
of  his  stuff  by  heart.  You  see  Erdreich  was  one  of  those 
destined  chaps  that  aren't  perhaps  discovered  when 
the  curtain  goes  up,  but  have  an  entrance  that  deter- 
mines the  course  of  the  play.  With  all  this  revival  of 
the  ancient  humble  life,  here  was  Erdreich,  by  God's 
luck,  ready  to  snatch  the  old  ballads  out  of  time  for- 
got, and  put  them  in  modern  dress,  just  as  simple, 
just  as  pure;  and  there  were  those,  scholars  and  such, 
that  said  the  revival  of  the  ancient  spirit  of  Arcady 
was  just  because  Erdreich  had  taught  the  populace  to 
sing  peace  and  kindliness  into  themselves,  and  there 
was  great  bandying  about  of  the  old  saw  about  caring 
not  who  made  the  history  of  the  nation  so  somebody 
might  make  the  songs.  And  this  day,  said  the  queen, 
she  and  the  prince  and  certain  of  the  royal  household 
were  going  to  ride  to  the  home  of  Erdreich,  perhaps 
ten  miles  out  in  the  valley  of  the  Area,  and  pay  their 
respects.  His  crowning  would  come  later,  and  that 
would  be  official  and  the  kingdom  would  take  part. 
But  this  was  only  to  show  in  what  love  they  held  him. 
The  prince — always  the  prince! — had  judged  it  best. 
"While  we  were  talking  about  Erdreich,  a  man  came 


330  VANISHING  POINTS 

out:  I  hesitate  to  say  lackey.  You  see  everybody  had 
the  same  look  of  intentness  on  the  business  in  hand 
and,  if  I  may  make  a  very  subtle  thing  so  definite, 
of  love  for  Arcady.  This  man  came  out  and  gave  the 
queen  a  written  message,  and  she  read  it,  and  without 
changing  a  shade  of  expression,  except  that  the  red 
came  into  her  cheeks,  she  gave  it  to  the  prince. 

"'The  King  of  Telluria!'  said  he,  speaking  out  as 
impulsively  as  you  might  if  you'd  got  a  wire  to  say  Aunt 
Sophy  was  imminent  and  you  knew  there  was  no  cus- 
tard pie.  l  Coming  here.  Coming  to-day,  with  a  small 
retinue.  What  does  it  mean?7 

"They  were  both  troubled.  I  could  see  royalty 
wasn't  in  the  habit  of  bearing  down  on  'em,  even 
neighboring  royalty.  But  the  queen  said  quite  sweetly, 
like  a  housekeeper  caught  making  jam  and  putting  a 
good  face  on  her  stained  fingers,  that  the  visit  to  Erd- 
reich  should  be  given  up.  And  then,  if  you  will  believe 
me,  I  was  offered  a  room  at  the  palace,  and  they  would 
send  for  my  luggage." 

"Because  you  were  the  distinguished  Mitchell." 

"Distinguished  nothing.  Because  I  was  going  to 
write  a  book  about  Arcady,  and  they  wanted  most 
tremendously  to  have  it  done.  Already  I  thought  I'd 
discovered  something:  that  the  queen  prized  Arcady 
almost  as  much  as  she  prized  the  prince.  As  for  him, 
I  didn't  know.  He  hadn't  had  his  test. 

"Now  the  rest  of  his  story  I  am  going  to  tell  you  as 
I  had  it  afterward  when  I  could  braid  the  strands  to- 
gether. If  you  ask  me  why  I  knew  this  or  that,  or  how 
I  could  have  been  in  the  room  or  in  three  places  at 
once,  I  can't  and  sha'n't  tell  you.  Ask  a  weaver  how 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY  331 

he  got  that  little  thread  of  blue,  when  his  blue  had  given 
out.  Maybe  he  walked  forty  miles  for  it.  Maybe  he 
wrenched  a  flower  off  its  stem  and  made  a  dye.  My 
weaving  is  life,  and  you've  got  to  accept  the  web  as 
I  toss  it  to  you  done." 

" That's  a  bargain/ '  said  I.  "Give  us  the  web.  All 
I  ask  is  to  see  and  handle." 

"Good  for  you!  Some  things  you've  always  got  to 
take  on  trust,  as  that  the  doctor  won't  poison  you, 
though  he  knows  how,  and  that  there  isn't  a  bull  in 
the  pasture  mixed  up  with  the  huckleberries.  Well, 
the  King  of  Telluria  came,  he  and  all  his  knights  riding 
on  fierce  horses  as  if  they'd  been  statues  come  to  life. 
They'd  taken  train  to  the  border  and  ridden  the  rest. 
I  give  you  my  word  I  could  see  just  how  they'd  look 
if  I'd  had  the  formula  for  stiffening  'em  into  equestrian 
statues  to  be  sold  for  public  squares.  The  king  was 
the  regular  old  sort.  If  you'd  painted  him  up,  you  could 
have  tucked  him  into  a  pack  of  cards  and  nobody'd 
have  known  the  difference.  Now,  I  am  an  attentive 
student  of  modern  affairs,  and  I  knew  what  that  quick 
breath  of  the  prince  meant  when  he  heard  they  were 
coming.  There  had  been  newspaper  nods  and  whispers 
about  a  match  between  the  prince  and  the  Princess  Eda 
of  Telluria,  and  if  the  prince  had  been  a  common 
Johnnie  like  you  or  me,  he  would  have  said,  'Mother, 
do  you  'spose  she's  coming,  too?'  But  living  under 
the  freeze  of  royal  etiquette,  all  he  could  do  was  simply 
to  say  nothing  and  kick  his  princely  self  for  a  fool  for 
hoping  even  for  a  minute  that  princesses  could  go  round 
calling  with  their  fathers  unannounced. 

"And  the  next  entrance  was  the  incredible  one  of 


332  VANISHING  POINTS 

the  Princess  Eda  herself.  The  king  and  his  suit  had 
been  taken  off  to  their  rooms,  and  the  prince  had  gone 
after  them,  and  while  the  queen  stood  in  the  great 
hall  thinking  hard — perhaps  about  how  she  should 
guide  the  ship  of  state  with  these  buccaneers  bearing 
down  on  it — a  slim  young  girl,  with  her  yellow  hair 
tied  up  tight  under  a  veil,  and  her  eyes  obscured  behind 
goggles,  ran  in  and  up  to  her,  as  if  she  knew  just  where 
she  meant  to  go.  And  the  queen  started,  and  being  a 
queen,  though  in  Arcady,  perhaps  wondered  whose  head 
had  got  to  come  off  for  allowing  even  this  butterfly 
invasion;  but  the  princess  held  up  a  hand  and  said, 
'Hush!  hush!'  and  kissed  her.  And  the  Queen  started 
and  said,  'Eda,  Eda!  Why,  Eda!'  Then,  just  like  any 
other  mother,  'How  glad  he'll  be!'  But  Eda  made  her 
understand  at  once  that  there  was  no  man  in  it  at  all. 
She  had  come  as  wildly  as  the  storm  comes  out  of  the 
north.  She  had  to  come.  Why?  She  didn't  know.  All 
a  girl's  vague,  wistful  wonder  under  driving  impulse 
shone  out  in  her  here.  At  least  she  wanted  to  set  foot 
in  Arcady.  And  she  could  never  run  away  from  home 
save  when  her  father,  too,  was  absent;  and  how  often 
could  you  hope  to  find  a  king  out  of  his  kingdom?  And 
she  had  impressed,  kidnapped,  terrorized  old  Bertelius, 
the  librarian  and  her  friend,  and  he  and  she  had  mo- 
tored by  the  mountain  road  in  terror  of  their  lives,  by 
cliff  and  chasm;  because,  you  see  (here  her  mouth 
smiled  enchantingly),  Bertelius  was  all  afire  about  the 
young  poet  Erdreich.  He  had  never  hoped  to  see  him; 
and  now,  if  he  was  game,  here  was  the  chance. 

"'You  shall  see  Erdreich,  both  of  you/  said  the 
queen.    'It  will  be  safest.    If  you  stayed  here  you  would 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY  333 

have  to  lie  in  hiding,  and  that's  not—  She  stopped  and 
smiled,  but  the  princess  knew  she  meant  not  royal 
nor  possible,  and  blushed  a  little  because  her  adventure 
had  perhaps  proven  her  too  bold.  'You  shall  go  at 
once  to  Erdreich,'  said  the  queen.  'His  grandmother 
will  be  good  to  you/ 

"'But—'  said  the  princess.  She  looked  most  im- 
ploring. Queen  Ismia  understood.  What  the  princess 
had  really  come  for  was  not  any  wholesale  adventure, 
not  to  let  Bertelius  meet  the  young  poet,  but  to  see 
the  prince.  Adventure,  indeed,  the  adventure  of 
meeting  the  prince,  from  the  wings  as  you  might  say, 
while  he  was  neither  throwing  over  her  the  irised 
glamour  of  the  spring  pigeon  nor  carolh'ng  serenades. 
At  this  the  queen  kissed  her.  She  smiled,  too,  and  the 
princess  blushed.  'Listen  to  me/  said  the  queen. 
'We  are  going  to-morrow  at  latest  to  pay  our  respects 
to  Erdreich  and  his  grandmother.  You  can  be  the 
little  maid  about  the  cottage.  You  can  see  and  not  be 
looked  at,  not  be  spoken  to.  Will  that  please  you?' 

"'But  my  father!'  said  the  princess.  Her  eyes  now 
were  full  of  light  and  courage. 

"'Would  our  good  King  of  Telluria  be  likely  to  con- 
cern himself  with  kitchen  wenches  in  cottages?'  said 
the  queen.  'No,  child,  he  won't  look  at  you.' 

"So  they  kissed  fervently  like  women  in  the  armed 
truce  of  conspiracy,  and  the  princess  and  old  Bertelius 
set  off,  something  to  his  disgust,  on  foot  and  the  lady  in 
borrowed  clothes,  for  the  poet's  valley. 

"Now  that  night  it  was  apparent  that  something  was 
happening  in  Arcady,  a  thing  that  never  happened 
before.  The  king  had  come  as  his  own  envoy.  He 


334  VANISHING  POINTS 

wanted  to  talk  it  over,  this  business  of  privilege  and 
land  jobbings  and  the  like,  and  he  and  the  prince  and 
Queen  Ismia  sat  together  on  the  terrace  and  looked  at 
the  moon.  Enough  to  set  you  crazy,  the  moon  of 
Arcady  is.  There  are  a  great  many  lovers  there.  And 
the  prince  fixed  his  eyes  on  the  black  line  of  the  Tel- 
lurian mountains  over  in  the  east,  and  remembered 
they  were  snow-covered  and  so  a  symbol  of  Eda  and 
her  cold  virginity,  and  he  sighed.  But  something  waked 
him  like  a  bomb  that  scatters  and  doesn't  strike. 

"'  You're  ridiculous,  if  you  will  permit  me  to  say  so/ 
old  Telluria  was  remarking.  'You've  got  no  army.' 

"'Oh,  yes,  pardon  me/  said  the  queen,  precisely  and 
bitingly.  'Every  man  in  Arcady  is  prepared  to  defend 
her  to  the  death.' 

"'What  with? — pitchforks,  spades,  and  rakes?' 

"'Pitchforks,  if  that's  what  they  happen  to  have 
in  their  hands  at  the  minute.  Spades  and  rakes? 
Yes.  They  keep  her  men  well  fed.' 

"'You've  made  no  appropriation  for  the  army  since 
the  late  king  died.' 

"There  was  an  implication  here,  and  the  queen  heard 
it  and  broke  two  sticks  of  her  fan  in  the  good  old  way, 
and  the  prince,  very  wide  awake  now,  felt  his  face  grow 
hot.  The  implication  was  that  this  had  been  a  sort  of 
hand-to-mouth  housekeeping  woman's  work,  and  not 
the  old  slam-bang  immemorial  style  at  all. 

"'We  have  made  appropriations/  said  the  queen. 
She  sounded  icier  than  the  snow  on  the  Tellurian  moun- 
tains. 'But  not  for  war.  Do  you  know  what  we  have 
done  with  our  money?' 

"He  did  know,   but  he  grunted  out  a  wholesale 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY  335 

repudiation  of  anything  she  could  or  might  have 
done. 

"'We've  brought  down  the  water  from  the  moun- 
tains. It's  in  every  man's  dooryard.  It  flows  through 
every  man's  vineyard,  if  he  wants  it.  There  are  no 
droughts  any  more  in  Arcady:  none  that  hurt  us. 
Piping  from  the  mountains  costs  a  good  bit,  Cousin 
Telluria.  Piping  on  the  mountains  used  to  be  the 
fashion;  but  now  we  can  do  that  with  a  good  heart, 
because  we've  done  the  other  piping,  too.' 

"She  was  rather  a  gay  little  queen,  you  see,  and 
she'd  got  her  blood  up.  She  could  afford  to  jolly  him. 
After  all,  he  was  only  old  Telluria  out  of  a  pack  of 
cards.  But  he  was  a  man,  too,  and  he  knew  the  secret 
springs  of  man's  vanity  and  cowardice  better  even 
than  she,  though  she  was  wiser  than  women  are.  All 
through  this  talk  he  had  the  air  of  setting  her  aside 
because  she  was  a  woman  and  calling  on  the  prince  to 
support  him  in  man's  tradition.  You  know  the  recipe. 
When  a  woman  cuts  straight  to  the  heart  of  things, 
you  say  to  her  in  a  fagged  way,  as  if  you'd  been  on  deck 
since  Adam,  'My  dear,  it  isn't  done  that  gait.'  If 
she's  bright  and  saucy  she  says,  'But  it  could  be,  and 
save  the  cost  of  miles  of  tape.'  The  queen  knew  her 
son  was  being  inducted  into  the  axioms  of  kingship, 
and  her  heart  swelled  and  her  throat  choked  and  she 
could  say  nothing. 

"'Did  you  know,'  said  the  king, — he  was  addressing 
the  prince  openly  now — 'did  you  know  those  damned 
Florians  had  discovered  gold?' 

"Now  there  is  no  reason  why  the  Florians  should  be 
damned  except  that  they  live  in  a  rocky,  ungrateful 


336  VANISHING  POINTS 

spot  where  they  are  likely  to  come  on  metals  that  make 
them  work  very  hard,  sometimes  underground,  and 
rouse  ill  passions  in  the  folks  that  don't  have  to  work, 
but  live  in  the  light, — necessarily,  you  see,  so  it  can  set 
off  the  Florian  diamonds.  That's  what  the  sun  is  for. 
The  prince  said  No,  he  hadn't  known  it.  His  port  was 
beginning  to  swell  perceptibly  and  he,  too,  left  his 
mother  out  of  the  talk.  He'd  begun  to  wonder  whether 
he'd  been  breeched  sufficiently  early. 

"'I  knew  it,'  said  the  queen.    But  nobody  listened. 

"'I  have  a  few  fellows  stationed  there,'  said  the 
king,  'workmen  ostensibly.  They  keep  me  informed, 
in  cipher.' 

"'I  have  some  very  good  friends  among  the  Florian 
workmen,'  said  the  queen.  'They  tell  me  what  has 
happened  without  reserve.' 

"'  They  're  very  close-mouthed/  said  the  king  to  the 
prince. 

"'They  talk  to  me  very  freely/  said  the  queen, 
'because  they  know  I  shall  keep  their  confidence/ 

"'I  don't  care  for  those  fellows,'  said  the  king. 
'They've  given  us  all  a  good  deal  of  trouble,  first  and 
last.  Of  course,'  he  went  on,  still  to  the  prince,  '  if  it 
should  happen  that  we  formed  any  sort  of  alliance — ' 
Here  he  stopped,  and  it  was  evident  what  alliance  he 
meant.  He  meant  Eda. 

"The  prince  got  very  hot  and  choked  a  little,  but  he 
answered  straight  off,  with  a  becoming  dignity,  'As  to 
that,  sir,  it  is  in  your  hands  and  in  hers.' 

'  In  that  case,'  said  the  king,  '  I  should  feel  that  we 
might  work  together  in  our  ideas  of  Flos.  But  if  you 
hand  it  back  to  Altaria — '  Here  he  broke  out  and 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY  337 

wasn't  kingly  for  a  minute — 'By  the  Lord,  I  never 
heard  of  such  a  thing.  Passing  a  province  over  to — 
to — '  He  was  so  mad  he  sputtered. 

'"To  the  power  you  filched  it  from/  said  the  queen. 
'The  chances  are  it  will  never  happen,  sir.  We  have 
left  it  to  their  option,  and  they  are  very  loyal  to  us,  very 
grateful.' 

"  'But  in  case  it  did  go  back  to  Altaria/  said  the  king, 
'I  might  feel  obliged  to  put  out  a  restraining  hand. 
You  see,  my  subjects  there  don't  have  all  the  privileges 
I  could  wish ' 

"'Years  ago/  said  the  queen,  'when  the  late  king 
annexed  Flos,  he  used  those  very  arguments.  Yet,  as 
everybody  remembers,  to  our  shame,  that  was  the  year 
the  quicksilver  was  discovered/ 

"'Ah!'  said  the  king,  suavely.  He  was  stroking  his 
kingly  beard,  and  if  it  had  been  daylight  it  could  prob- 
ably have  been  seen  that  he  looked  greedy  and  very 
ugly.  'Ah,  so  it  was.' 

'"And  this  year/  said  the  queen,  'they  have  dis- 
covered gold.  And  this  year  you  think  of  annexing 
Flos.' 

"'They're  troublesome  neighbors/   said  the  king. 

" 'They're  rich  neighbors/  said  the  queen. 

"'Well/  said  the  king  to  Belphcebus,  as  if  this  was  a 
bargain  between  two.  'Think  it  over.' 

"So  they  went  to  their  royal  couches,  the  king 
scornful  of  Arcady  and  its  housekeeping,  the  prince  in  a 
state  of  aggrieved  dignity  toward  his  mother  because 
she  had  been  such  a  thriftless  regent,  and  Queen  Ismia 
holding  her  head  so  high  you'd  have  thought  she'd 
hardly  see  over  her  nose. 


338  VANISHING  POINTS 

"Now  the  real  part  of  my  story  is  to  come,  so  I'll 
scamp  a  little  here  and  tell  how  the  queen,  in  spite  of 
this  complication  of  her  royal  guest,  pouring  innuendo 
into  the  prince's  ear  about  the  good  old  ways  of  govern- 
ment, kept  pressing  the  question  of  going  to  pay  Er- 
dreich,  the  poet,  the  royal  respects.  She  had  to,  you 
see,  it  being  a  pact  she'd  made  with  Eda,  who  was 
probably  at  the  cottage  Erdreich,  sweeping  and  dusting 
with  strange  implements,  when  she'd  only  been  accus- 
tomed to  riding-whips  and  golf-sticks.  And  perhaps, 
too,  Eda  was  falling  in  love  with  the  poet;  for  a  poet 
in  the  hand  is  worth  twoscore  princes  in  the  bush. 
So  they  set  out  on  horseback,  the  queen  very  sweet  and 
smiling  because  she'd  got  her  way,  and  the  king  quite 
grumpy  because  this  trailing  of  poets  seemed  to  him 
a  waste  of  time,  and  the  prince  also  grumpy  now  he  was 
making  a  point  of  doing  everything  the  king  did :  just  as 
a  little  boy  at  school  copies  the  big  boy,  or  even  swag- 
gers and  smokes  like  father.  It  was  a  pretty  ride  down 
a  cliff  road  into  a  green  valley  with  the  sound  of  water 
all  the  way." 

"Did  you  go,  too?"  I  asked. 

"  Oh,  yes.  On  a  very  good  nag  the  queen  had  ordered 
out  for  me.  There  wasn't  much  talk,  and  that  of  an 
incidental  sort.  But  once  I  thought  I  caught  a  glimpse, 
in  a  path  alongside  ours,  of  the  scarecrow  I'd  seen  run- 
ning that  morning  to  head  off  the  prince.  And  the  old 
king  saw  him  too,  and  reined  up  and  called  to  every- 
body indiscriminately: 

'" Secure  that  fellow!' 

"But  here  the  prince  suddenly  took  a  stand  and  was 
very  princely. 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY         339 

" '  I  beg  your  pardon/  said  he.  'I  think  I'd  let  him  go. 
He's  only  a  poor  fellow  just  out  of  prison.  He  runs 
extraordinarily.  He  ran  me  down  the  other  day — I 
was  on  horseback,  too — to  tell  me  how  glad  he  was 
to  get  back  to  Arcady.' 

"'Where'd  he  been?'  fumed  the  king.  I  can  see  his 
old  walrus  mustaches  bristling  now.  'Where'd  the 
fellow  been? ' 

"The  prince  looked  at  him  modestly,  as  if  he'd  really 
rather  not  say.  Then  he  did  answer,  in  a  very  low  tone. 

"'He  was  a  Florian,  sir,  imprisoned  for  his  attempt 
on  the  life  of — my  father.' 

"'And  he's  out!'  The  old  walrus  needed  an  ice- 
floe to  cool  him  now.  'You've  let  him  out ! ' 

"The  prince  was  three-quarters  turning  to  his  mother. 
But  she  wouldn't  help  him.  She  wouldn't  even  te^r- 

"'We  judged  it  best,'  said  the  prince.  He  dion't 
stutter.  He  was  clear  and  cool.  I  fancied  he  was 
thinking  what  mother  would  wish  him  to  say.  'What 
he  did,  he  did  from  his  sense  of  awful  injustice.  We'd 
treated  the  Florians  like  the  deuce,  you  know.  And 
so — well,  mother  and  I  just  let  those  prisoners  out.' 

" '  Very  well,'  said  the  king.  It  was  the  way  a  Mauser 
would  have  spoken,  if  it  could.  '  If  you  and  your 
mother  are  not  blown  up  for  your  pains,  it  isn't  because 
you  don't  deserve  to  be.  And  if  I'm  in  it  with  you,  sir, 
I'll  never  forgive  you,  by  God,  never.' 

"But  now  the  figure  wasn't  to  be  seen  any  more 
among  the  trees.  I  rather  debated  with  myself  whether 
I'd  seen  it  at  all. 

"After  we  had  ridden  some  nine  miles,  the  valley 
opened  out  into  a  place  that  smiled,  a  circle  of  green  a 


340  VANISHING  POINTS 

good  many  acres  wide,  a  place  to  be  happy  in,  and  there 
on  the  edge  of  the  forest  was  a  thatched  cottage,  all 
roses  and  pinks,  and  on  the  door-step,  in  a  brown  frock, 
and  looking  as  if  she  had  caught  an  enchanted  dream 
by  the  tail-feather  and  couldn't  believe  in  it  yet,  sat  the 
Princess  Eda,  her  hair  braided  in  a  pigtail  down  her 
back.  We  had  been  going  softly  on  the  green,  but  when 
she  saw  us  she  looked  up  frightened  and  stood  there, 
held  by  the  royal  instinct  not  to  fly,  and  yet  with  the 
fear  of  her  father  written  all  over  her  face.  But  he'd 
no  thought  of  her,  and  the  queen  gave  her  a  careless 
cold  glance  and  said  to  her: 

'"Go  in,  my  good  girl,  and  tell  Erdreich  and  his 
mother  their  friends  have  come  to  visit  them.' 

"With  that  we  dismounted,  and  the  grooms  that 
rode  with  us  led  the  horses  away  to  the  shade;  and  out  of 
the  cottage  came  a  beautiful  old  woman  in  the  peasant 
dress  of  Arcady.  Her  hair  was  snow  white,  but  thick 
and  fine,  as  if  it  wasn't  old  at  all,  but  some  special 
kind  of  beautiful  hair  a  young  person  as  well  might  be 
glad  to  have.  And  she  had  pink  cheeks  and  eyes  bluer 
than  anything,  even  blue  flowers :  for  they've  a  surface, 
if  it's  only  velvet,  and  here  was  liquid  of  a  depth  not  to 
be  plumbed.  The  old  woman's  eyes  met  the  eyes  of  the 
queen.  It  was  a  strange  look  for  a  peasant  and  a  queen 
to  blend  and  take  again.  It  seemed  to  ask  and  answer 
a  question.  'Is  all  well? '  asked  the  eyes  of  each,  and  the 
answer  was,  'Not  so  very  well.'  But  the  queen  did  her 
part  with  a  royal  courtesy.  They  had  come,  she  said, 
to  see  Erdreich.  Was  he  at  home?  No,  the  old  dame 
answered,  with  a  careful  deference,  Erdreich  was 
away  on  one  of  his  stays  in  the  forest.  The  queen  knew 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY        341 

how  he  withdrew  himself,  from  time  to  time,  and  sought 
out  the  foresters  and, old  men  too  feeble  now  to  do 
anything  but  tend  cattle  on  the  mountainside,  and  took 
down  from  their  lips  the  stories  and  ballads  of  ancient 
Arcady.  But  the  grandmother  had  heard  his  horn 
from  the  glade  a  mile  farther  on,  by  the  brookside,  and 
this  was  where  he  often  lingered  to  make  his  poems 
to  the  sound  of  falling  water.  Now,  before  anybody 
else  could  get  a  chance,  I  very  humbly  and,  I  hope, 
not  discourteously  bowed  before  the  queen — she  was 
queen  and  woman,  too,  as  well  as  regent;  she  liked  the 
old  customs  of  the  bent  knee  and  beseeching  eyes — 
and  asked  permission  to  ride  over  to  the  glade  and 
tell  the  poet  he  had  guests  at  home.  You  see,  I  was 
dying  to  be  in  it,  and  I  knew  pretty  well  what  the  royal 
crowd  here  was  likely  to  do :  the  queen  to  talk  nicely  to 
the  old  woman,  the  king  to  yawn  his  head  off,  because 
he  didn't  care  a  hoot  for  poetry,  and  the  prince  to  hit 
his  leg  with  his  riding  crop  and  wish  he  was  at  home 
trying  on  the  crown.  The  queen  gave  me  a  smile. 
I  have  that  smile  now.  I  keep  it  by  me. 

"  'By  all  means,  go/  said  she.  'We  shall  be  indebted 
to  you/ 

"  And  I  got  my  horse  and  rode  away,  and  if  I'd  heard 
a  jingle  of  any  sort,  even  a  couple  of  nickels  in  my 
pocket,  I  should  have  known  I  was  a  knight  off  on  a 
quest  to  be  remembered  'way  through  the  twentieth 
century.  The  road  roughened  to  a  cart  path,  and  the 
cart  path  ran  impetuously  into  the  forest,  and  got 
timid  and  narrowed  until  now  the  undergrowth  brushed 
my  horse's  nose  and  closed  against  his  flanks.  And  then 
it  opened  again,  and  there  was  daylight  before  me, 


342  VANISHING  POINTS 

green  between  trunks  of  trees.  And  I  rode  on  at  a 
trot  and  came  out  on  a  clearing,  all  bluebells,  and  there 
was  a  woodman's  hut,  and  Erdreich  and  Bertelius  sat 
on  a  bench  by  the  door,  deep  in  talk.  How  did  I  know 
them?  By  their  mugs,  man.  Bertelius  is  one  of  the 
most  celebrated  Dryasdusts  in  the  world.  His  nose  for 
a  first  edition  is  longer  than  Cyrano's,  and  more  sensi- 
tive than  Rover's.  And  don't  you  s'pose  I'd  seen  a 
photograph  of  Erdreich,  the  poet,  in  the  translated 
volumn  of  Miss  de  Smith,  of  Phoenix,  Arizona?  I 
halted,  and  tied  my  horse  to  a  little  beech-tree,  and 
made  myself  known  in  rather  more  mediaeval  language 
than  I  use  every  day,  as  a  messenger  from  the  queen. 
Would  Erdreich  be  pleased  to  come  home  and  let 
royalty  show  him  how  inferior  royalty  thought  itself, 
at  this  stage  of  the  world's  progress?  I  expected  him 
to  jump  up,  beg  me  to  mount  my  horse,  and  let  him, 
hand  on  flank,  trot  after  me  back  again  and  so  go 
tailing  into  notoriety.  Nothing  of  the  sort.  He  was 
very  courteous,  this  young  poet,  very  grave  and  un- 
affected, but  he'd  got  some  other  bee  in  his  bonnet 
besides  the  plaudits  of  royalty.  It  buzzed  most  horribly 
and  scared  the  other  one  away.  Bertelius  took  no  man- 
ner of  notice  of  me.  In  his  eyes  I  was  probably  an 
outlander  speaking  indifferent  Arcadian  and  not  likely 
to  understand  a  tithe  of  what  he  began  to  pour  out  in  a 
rush,  all  of  it  adjurations  to  Erdreich  to  'remember, 
remember/ ' 

"How  did  he  look?    Was  he  really  an  old  man?" 
"Is  he,  you  mean.    He's  not  dead  yet.    Bertelius — 
well,  he  looks  absolutely  and  entirely  as  if  you  had 
made  up  a  recipe  for  a  librarian  and  had  the  finishing 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY        343 

touches  put  on  by  a  costumer:  long  beard,  eyes  per- 
manently in  hiding,  little  cap,  and  a  sort  of  monkish 
habit.  And  Erdreich  was  a  very  spectacular  young 
person,  handsomer  than  the  prince,  oh,  far  handsomer. 
I  was  glad  Eda  hadn't  seen  him  first.  He  was  all 
yellow  hair  and  blue  eyes,  and  strong  as  a  forester: 
which  he  was,  indeed,  before  he  dropped  into  poetry. 
Now  I  took  the  cue  old  Bertelius  thrust  on  me,  and  I 
stood  there  by  my  horse  dull  and  dumb  as  a  groom, 
and  listening.  (Do  you  ever  think  how  much  listening 
is  done  by  the  chaps  that  are  hanging  round  to  do  things, 
the  ones  the  novelists  give  ' impassive  faces'  to?  You'd 
think  their  ears  would  grow  by  cocking.)  And  it's 
my  long  suit  that  I  can  understand  any  language  you'll 
mention  better  than  I  speak  it.  So  there  you  are. 
Bertelius  and  I  might  have  been  hobnobbing  at  a 
coffee  klatsch,  and  he  giving  me  his  entire  confidence 
and  attention  for  all  I  lost. 

"'You  are  a  young  man,  Erdreich/  said  he.  'Heed 
an  old  one. ' 

"  Erdreich  looked  at  him  much  as  the  prince  had  been 
looking  at  the  King  of  Telluria,  with  the  worship  of 
the  ignorant  for  the  seasoned,  the  wistful  gleam  in  the 
eye  that  says,  'If  I  knew  what  you  do,  how  much 
better  I  could  use  it.  I  don't  hanker  after  being  you; 
but  oh,  how  I  want  to  know!'  It's  precisely  like  the 
puppy  trotting  round  after  the  old  sheep-killer.  'I 
won't  kill  sheep,'  says  the  puppy's  eye.  'Oh,  no!  but 
just  let  me  come  into  the  pasture  and  see  you  nab  'em.' 

"'Your  genius  is  buried  here,'  said  Bertelius,  and 
I  could  see  he  was  Bertelius  the  tempter.  '  All  the  best 
years  of  your  life  when  you  should  have  been  writing 


344  VANISHING  POINTS 

your  splendid  dramas,  you  have  been  wandering  round 
the  forest  reviving  old  ballads/ 

"'You  know  why/  said  the  poet.  He  looked,  in 
spite  of  his  fresh  color,  worn  and  worried,  as  if  his  day's 
excursion  with  Bertelius  had  been  a  sort  of  debauch. 
'I  wanted  to  write  my  dramas,  but  my  grandmother 
told  me — begged  me — to  collect  the  folk-songs  first, 
because  in  a  little  time  all  the  people  that  know  them 
will  be  dead/ 

"'Your  grandmother  I'  said  the  man  of  books.  It 
was  pity  in  his  tone;  it  was  implication.  'Think/  it 
seemed  to  say,  'think,  young  poet,  what  you  are  telling 
me.  You  are  saying  that  you  allow  the  mammal 
who  brought  your  mother  and  incidentally  you  into 
the  world  and  provided  you  with  food  for  a  few  years 
after,  to  settle  the  status  of  your  most  admirable  and 
unusual  brain.  Think  what  you  are  saying.  It  is 
absurd/  Bertelius  spoke  significantly.  'This  is  a 
country/  said  he,  'governed  by  women.  Telluria  is 
governed  by  a  man/ 

"The  poet  had  flushed  up  a  deep  girlish  pink.  He 
began  to  justify  his  grandmother,  justify  himself. 

"'She  knew  the  way  my  genius — my  tastes — went. 
My  dramas  were  all  for  war. ' 

"'War/  said  Bertelius,  gravely,  'is  a  necessity,  an 
ill  necessity/ 

"The  poet's  eyes  began  to  glow. 

"'But  she  says/  he  began,  and  then  apologized. 
'Grandmother  is  very  wise/  Bertelius  bowed  be- 
nignantly.  'She  says  the  mind  of  the  people  inflames 
so  easily.  They  can't  bear  dramas  of  war,  she  says. 
Give  them  the  old  legends  of  honor,  of  reaping  and 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY        345 

sowing,  of  hunger  and  thirst  that  the  children  may  be 
fed.  Give  them  those,  she  says,  and  teach  them  to 
look  on  war  as  an  insane  fury.' 

"Bertelius  bowed  again.  His  delicate  mouth  curled 
up  a  little  at  the  corners. 

"'Very  amiable/  said  he,  'very  feminine  and  sweet. 
Ladies  are  temperamentally  timid.  We  won't  discuss 
that.  But  let  me  urge  you  again  to  come  to  Telluria 
and  revive  our  ballads  for  us.' 

"'You  said  it  was  wasted  time/  the  poet  fished  up 
out  of  their  talk. 

"'Not  if  other  things  go  with  it.  But  in  Telluria 
you  would  have  time  for  the  other  things,  your  dramas, 
your  glorious  plays/ 

"I  saw  the  game.  Dryasdust  wanted  the  ballads 
of  his  own  country  dug  out  of  oblivion,  and  this  boy 
had  the  antiquary  nose.  The  drama  business  was 
lagnappe,  thrown  in.  It  was  time  for  me  to  fling  a  stone 
and  make  a  ripple.  I  stepped  forward.  I  spoke  with 
the  deepest  respect. 

"'Am  I  to  tell  her  majesty/  I  said,  'that  her  poet 
declines  to  come? ' 

"Erdreich  was  on  his  feet.  He  was  pale  now,  white 
as  Bertelius's  beard.  It  was  not  the  custom  in  Ar- 
cady,  I  could  see,  for  Queen  Ismia  to  be  told  it  wasn't 
convenient. 

'"I'll  come/  said  he,  '  I'll  come  at  once/  He  turned 
to  Bertelius.  '  Shall  I  leave  you,  sir?  Or  will  you  come?' 

"Old  Bertelius  had  got  out  a  black  book  and  a  pair 
of  horn  spectacles.  The  fire  had  died  down  in  him, 
and  he  was  fractious  and  hungry  for  the  seclusion  of 
the  printed  page. 


346  VANISHING  POINTS 

"'Ay,  ay/  said  he.  'Go.  Think  it  over.  I'll  come 
by  and  by/ 

"So  we  left  him  there,  and  I,  leading  my  horse — for 
the  poet  had  refused  to  take  it  and  let  me  follow — we 
made  short  work  of  the  distance,  and,  quite  silent 
and  rather  hot,  came  out  on  the  cottage  again.  And 
there  I  could  read  at  once  the  history  of  the  time 
since  I'd  been  gone,  and  read  it  from  the  two  pictures 
there  before  me.  The  king  and  the  prince  were  together 
pacing  up  and  down  before  the  door,  the  king  soliloquiz- 
ing and  the  prince  giving  ear.  Just  inside,  by  a  window 
of  plants,  were  the  queen  and  the  peasant  grandmother, 
standing  face  to  face,  eye  to  eye,  and  very  grave.  The 
two  groups  were  like  hostile  armies  during  truce.  When 
we  came  up,  the  tension  snapped,  and  the  prince  spoke 
to  Erdreich  very  prettily  as  if  he  were  a  brother, 
telling  him  the  queen  was  within.  Would  he  go  in  and 
greet  her?  Erdreich,  all  a  timid  propriety,  went  in, 
and  the  other  two  followed,  but  I  stood  outside  by  the 
little  window.  I  began  to  feel  I  was  out  of  the  picture, 
and  I'd  better  be  content  with  listening.  Well,  there 
were  fine  speeches,  and  the  queen  told  Erdreich  what 
a  loyal  subject  he  was,  and  told  the  king  how  valuable 
Erdreich  was,  and  talked  with  her  eyelids  and  brows 
to  the  prince  to  the  effect  that  he  was  to  say  so  too. 
But  the  old  grandmother,  if  you  please,  without  a 
look  at  anybody,  got  out  a  wheel  and  pulled  it  into  the 
middle  of  the  room  and  began  to  spin.  Erdreich  looked 
at  her  for  a  minute  as  if  she  had  committed  treason. 
The  King  of  Telluria  frowned;  he  seemed  to  challenge 
everybody  to  tell  why  he  should  have  the  impression 
that  a  peasant  woman,  almost  invisible  from  her  insig- 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY        347 

nificance,  should  be  presuming  to  go  on  with  sordid 
occupations  under  his  royal  eyes.  Only  Queen  Ismia 
wasn't  upset.  She  kept  on  talking  to  Erdreich  and  he 
looked  flattered  and  dazed,  and  in  a  minute  or  two, 
as  if  they  were  going  to  play  stagecoach,  everybody 
sat  down  in  a  circle  about  the  grandmother,  and  I 
saw  Queen  Ismia  touch  the  old  woman's  glittering 
headdress.  It  was  the  ancient  headgear  of  the  Arcadian 
women,  handed  down  from  generation  to  generation, 
and  worn  on  gala  days.  I  could  have  sworn  she  didn't 
have  it  on  when  we  came.  Now  the  queen  touched  it 
and  said  in  a  kind  of  lulling,  soothing  cradle  tone, 
'  It's  very  bright.' 

"Well,  I  saw  it  was  bright.  And  I  grew  abnormally 
conscious  of  the  hum  of  the  wheel,  and  something  inside 
my  ears  kept  saying,  'It's  very  bright.  It's  very 
bright.'  But  then  something  else  further  inside  me 
said,  'You  fool,  you're  a  war  correspondent,  and  you 
were  at  the  explosion  in  Spain,  and  you've  been  'most 
destroyed  by  a  destroyer,  and  you  didn't  turn  a  hair. 
And  you're  outside  the  window,  and  what  has  got  them 
hasn't  got  you.  So  keep  your  eye  peeled,  my  boy, 
and  you'll  begin  to  understand  something  about  the 
ins  and  outs  of  sovereignty. ' 

"For  something  had  got  'em  all,  all  but  the  two 
women.  I  began  to  think  of  them  as  the  two  queens 
now:  for  though  Queen  Ismia  had  on  the  plainest  of 
black  habits,  she  looked  most  awfully  regal.  And  when 
I  glanced  at  the  old  peasant  woman  and  saw  how 
inscrutable  she  was,  as  if  she'd  got  some  sort  of  power 
under  her  hand  and  was  turning  it  on,  bit  by  bit,  bit 
by  bit,  but  not  too  fast  for  fear  the  sheathing  would 


348  VANISHING  POINTS 

break,  I  could  only  think  of  her  crown  and  how  she, 
too,  must  be  a  kind  of  queen." 

"What  were  the  others  doing,  the  three  men?" 

"They  were  asleep,  and  the  old  king  was  making 
horrible  faces.  It  was  the  prince  I  watched  most.  I  had 
an  idea  from  the  way  the  two  queens  looked  at  him 
that  he  was  the  centre  of  the  play.  He  began  to  writhe 
and  then  to  talk,  wonderingly  sometimes  as  if  he  spelled 
a  lesson  from  a  book  too  hard  for  him  and  sometimes 
violently. 

"'We're  not  prepared.'  That's  what  he  called 
out  first.  l We're  not  prepared.'  Then  he  stopped  a 
minute,  as  if  he  saw  things  and  they  told  their  story. 
'But  we  couldn't  be  prepared,'  said  he.  'Nobody 
could  be  prepared  for  that.  They're  dropping  on 
us  from  the  clouds.  They're  dropping  bombs.  My 
God!  my  God!  there's  the  theatre  gone.  There's  the 
silk  factory.  The  girls  in  there!  Why,  mother,  they  were 
girls,  nothing  but  girls.  And  that's  then-  blood.' 

"The  poet  sat  stark  on  a  little  stool,  staring  at  the 
whirring  wheel. 

"'Do  you  think,'  said  he — it  was  the  Lady  Macbeth 
tone — 'do  you  think  roses  would  grow  out  of  such 
blood  as  that?' 

"The  old  king  was  seeing  things.  I've  never  made 
up  my  mind  whether  they  all  saw  the  same  things, 
or  different  ones  adapted  to  their  grade  and  textbook. 
The  old  king  gave  a  groan. 

"'She  need  not  have  died,'  said  he.  'Eda  needn't 
have  died,  she  and  her  little  son!' 

"The  peasant  woman  spoke. 

"'It  will  happen,'  said  she,  in  a  kind  of  monotonous 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY        349 

voice,  as  if  she'd  set  it  to  the  tune  of  the  wheel.  'II 
will  happen  if  you  open  the  door.  Your  hand  is  on 
the  latch.  Shall  you  open  the  door? ' 

"And  now  it  was  Erdreich  talking.  He,  too,  sat 
under  the  same  paralysis  of  horror,  but  his  horror 
was  at  himself. 

"'I  called  it  doughty  deeds/  said  he,  'but  it  was 
blood.  This  war?  This  is  the  butcher's  trade.  Oh, 
horrible !  blood !  blood ! ' 

"But  after  all  it  was  the  prince  that  told  us  most. 

"'What  do  you  see,  Prince?'  said  the  old  peasant 
woman,  in  a  steady  tone,  as  if  she  was  afraid  to  speak 
too  loud.  He  might  have  been  the  watcher  on  the  tower 
and  she  the  soldier  down  below.  The  prince  was 
trembling.  I  got  uneasy  as  I  looked  at  him.  He 
behaved  like  a  horse  I'd  seen  shuddering  with  sunstroke. 

"'It's  all  destroyed,'  said  he.  'The  palace  is  de- 
stroyed. That  wouldn't  matter,  though  we  did  like  the 
windows — mother,  didn't  we  like  the  windows  looking 
toward  the  west? — But  the  little  houses  down  by  the 
river,  where  the  workmen  went  every  night  and  played 
on  their  fiddles  and  dug  in  their  gardens,  they're  all 
gone.  They  dropped  explosives  on  them,  and  then  the 
fire — -' 

"The  old  king  roared  out,  'Who's  that?'  and  whether 
he  meant  he  saw  the  same  thing  or  not,  I  shall  never 
know,  but  the  prince  answered  him: 

"The  prisoner!  the  prisoner  that  runs  fast  with 
something  in  his  hand.  That's  an  automatic  rifle  in 
his  hand.  He's  coming  to  us — us — us — he'll  blow  us 
into  powder. ' 

"I  began  to  have  a  sensation  in  my  head  as  if  every- 


350  VANISHING  POINTS 

body  was  a  fool,  and  yet  we'd  been  caught  in  a  net 
and  couldn't  help  it.  And  then  the  wheel  stopped  and 
the  old  woman  got  quietly  up  and  set  it  aside  and  lifted 
off  her  head-dress  and  laid  it  on  a  shelf  behind  a  curtain, 
and  Queen  Ismia  was  saying  in  an  even,  unhurried 
way,  as  if  she'd  been  talking  for  the  last  half-hour, 
'And  so,  Erdreich,  we  came  to  tell  you  how  dear  you  are 
to  the  kingdom  and  to  us.' 

"And  Erdreich  opened  his  eyes  and  blinked  them 
like  a  baby,  and  found  at  the  same  minute  the  queen 
was  talking  to  him  and  he  was  sitting  while  she  stood; 
and  he  got  on  his  feet  like  lightning,  stumbling  a  little, 
and  stood  there  all  afire  with  devotion  and  ready  to  get 
her  the  moon  and  seven  stars  if  she  wanted  'em.  And 
the  prince,  too,  opened  his  eyes,  and  he  cried  out  in  a 
wild  voice: 

'" Mother,  mother!  God  save  ArcadyP  And  then 
he  looked  straight  to  where  Eda  stood  in  the  doorway 
in  her  borrowed  dress.  And  he  got  up  and  made  three 
steps  across  the  room  and  said  her  name,  'Eda!  Eda!' 
twice,  with  a  kind  of  sob.  And  she  sobbed,  too,  It  was 
the  prettiest  sight  I  ever  saw,  those  two  young  things 
all  afire  with  love  and  youth,  holding  each  other's  hands 
and  forgetting  they  weren't  invisible. 

" '  How  did  you  know  me? '  said  Eda. 

"'Of  course  I  knew  you,  Eda/  said  he.  'How  did 
you  know  me? ' 

" 'Oh,  I've  been  peeping  through  the  crack. ' 

"And  they  both  laughed,  and  the  king  came  awake, 
and  gave  a  roaring  'Haw!  haw!'  Nobody  seemed  to 
wonder  how  anybody  had  got  anywhere.  They  were 
just  there,  that's  all. 


THE  QUEENS  OF  ARCADY        351 

" '  Cousin, '  said  the  old  king.  He  was  speaking  to 
Queen  Ismia.  '  I  like  your  way  of  doing  things.  You're 
a  mighty  fine  housekeeper.  You're  a  mighty  fine 
mother.  Why,  a  kingdom's  only  a  bigger  sort  of 
household,  after  all.  I  believe  if  you  and  Altaria  and 
I  agreed  on  a  sort  of  iron-clad  treaty,  we  could  all 
turn  our  war  tax  into  something  practical,  as  you've 
done.  Roads  we  need,  roads  and  schools.  What  say, 
cousin? ' 

"'We  must  consult  the  prince,'  said  she,  as  if  state- 
craft wasn't  a  stitch  she  knew.  'And  now  shall  we  ride 
home  again?  There's  a  horse  and  a  habit  for  Eda. 
I  had  them  brought  along.'  And  even  then,  if  you'll 
believe  me,  nobody  thought  to  say,  'How  did  Eda 
come  here?  And  where's  Bertelius?  And  is  he  going 
to  sit  a  thousand  years,  like  Merlin  in  the  forest,  with 
horn  spectacles,  and  a  black  book?'  You  see,  when 
you're  happy  because  you've  found  the  road  to  happi- 
ness, you're  in  a  dream,  and  in  a  dream  you  don't 
need  to  know  how  anything  is.  It  is,  that's  all. 

"Oh,  there's  one  other  thing.  I  almost  forgot  it. 
When  we  were  all  on  our  horses,  out  between  the  trees 
comes  the  scarecrow  man,  like  a  slanting  bamboo  pole 
shot  from  a  sling.  And  he'd  something  in  his  hand. 
It  was  a  little  thing:  a  flower,  a  blue  flower,  the  Cam- 
panula Arcadinensis.  Do  you  know  where  it  grows 
in  Arcady?  It's  at  the  feet  of  inaccessible  cliffs  in 
gorges  it  makes  you  dizzy  to  look  into.  And  now  it's 
Arcady's  national  flower.  He  pressed  himself  close 
to  us,  and  held  it  up  to  the  queen.  She  put  out  her 
hand  to  take  it.  I  wish  you  could  have  seen  her  face. 
That  was  a  queen. 


352  VANISHING  POINTS 

"'For  you,  madam/  said  he.  His  eyes  were  sad, 
wild,  lonesome  eyes — the  eyes  of  a  prisoner — but  they 
were  full  of  light.  'All  the  gems  are  yours,  and  all  the 
flowers.' 

"And  she  not  only  took  the  flower,  that  queen,  she 
laid  her  hand  on  his  ragged  shoulder,  and  her  eyes  were 
full  of  tears." 

He  stopped. 

"Well,"  said  I,  "what  happened?" 

"That's  all." 

"Did  the  prince  marry  Eda?" 

"Oh,  yes." 

"Did  the  powers  go  to  war?" 

"Oh,  dear  me,  no!  Nobody  went  to  war  ever,  after 
what  they'd  seen." 

"Is  Arcady  in  actual  existence  now?" 

"Course  it  is,  much  as  ever  it  was." 

"What's  the  use,  Mitchell,"  said  I,  "what  is  the  use? 
You  know  this  whole  story  is  a  part  of  your  bluff." 

"No,  'tisn't  either.  It's  a  part  of  my  busy  past. 
Didn't  I  tell  you  I  saw  it  myself,  pars-magna-fuied  it? 
Well,  if  I  didn't  somebody  told  me.  Who  was  it,  now? 
Who  was  it  told  me?  Come  to  think  of  it,  was  it  the 
German  Emperor,  that  day  he  said  he'd  written  a 
comic  opera  and  didn't  know  how  to  get  his  third  act? 
You  ask  him,  some  tune  when  it  comes  hi  just  right." 


352  VANISHING  POINTS 

"'For  you,  madam/  said  he.  His  eyes  were  sad, 
wild,  lonesome  eyes — the  eyes  of  a  prisoner — but  they 
were  full  of  light.  'All  the  gems  are  yours,  and  all  the 
flowers/ 

"And  she  not  only  took  the  flower,  that  queen,  she 
laid  her  hand  on  his  ragged  shoulder,  and  her  eyes  were 
full  of  tears." 

He  stopped. 

"Well,"  said  I,  "what  happened?" 

"That's  all." 

"Did  the  prince  marry  Eda?" 

"Oh,  yes." 

"Did  the  powers  go  to  war?" 

"Oh,  dear  me,  no!  Nobody  went  to  war  ever,  after 
what  they'd  seen." 

"Is  Arcady  in  actual  existence  now?" 

"Course  it  is,  much  as  ever  it  was." 

"What's  the  use,  Mitchell,"  said  I,  "what  is  the  use? 
You  know  this  whole  story  is  a  part  of  your  bluff." 

"No,  'tisn't  either.  It's  a  part  of  my  busy  past. 
Didn't  I  tell  you  I  saw  it  myself,  pars-magna-fuied  it? 
Well,  if  I  didn't  somebody  told  me.  Who  was  it,  now? 
Who  was  it  told  me?  Come  to  think  of  it,  was  it  the 
German  Emperor,  that  day  he  said  he'd  written  a 
comic  opera  and  didn't  know  how  to  get  his  third  act? 
You  ask  him,  some  tune  when  it  comes  in  just  right." 


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SEP  16  193S 

SEP  17  ,93, 

•  vU| 

SEP   25  1942 

LD  21-95m-7,'37 

928565 


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